SOCIAL FORCES 
IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO ., Limited 

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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

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SOCIAL FORCES 
IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



BY 

A. M. SIMONS 



Nefo fgorfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1912 

All rights reserved 



\S<£> 



Copyright, 191 i, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 191 1. Reprinted 
January, 1912. 




J. S. Cusbing- Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO MY WIFE 

MAY WOOD SIMONS 

WHOSE CONTINUOUS COOPERATION AND ADVICE 
AT ALL STAGES OF THIS WORK 
MIGHT WELL ENTITLE HER TO BE NAMED 
AS CO-AUTHOR 



PREFACE 



That political struggles are based upon economic 
interests is to-day disputed by few students of society. 
The attempt has been made in this work to trace the 
various interests that have arisen and struggled in each 
social stage and to determine the influence exercised by 
these contending interests in the creation of social insti- 
tutions. 

Back of every political party there has always stood 
a group or class which expected to profit by the activity 
and the success of that party. When any party has at- 
tained to power, it has been because it has tried to estab- 
lish institutions or to modify existing ones in accord with 
its interests. 

Changes in the industrial basis of society — inven- 
tions, new processes, and combinations and methods of 
producing and distributing goods — create new interests 
with new social classes to represent them. These im- 
provements in the technique of production are the dy- 
namic element that brings about what we call progress 
in society. 

In this work I have sought to begin at the origin of each 
line of social progress. I have first endeavored to de- 
scribe the steps in mechanical progress, then the social 
classes brought into prominence by the mechanical 
changes, then the struggle by which these new classes 
sought to gain social power, and, finally, the institutions 

vii 



viii 



PREFACE 



which were created or the alterations made in existing 
institutions as a consequence of the struggle, or as a 
result of the victory of a new class. 

It has seemed to me that these underlying social forces 
are of more importance than the individuals that were 
forced to the front in the process of these struggles, or 
even than the laws that were established to record the 
results of the conflict. In short, I have tried to describe 
the dynamics of history rather than to record the ac- 
complished facts, to answer the question, "Why did it 
happen?" as well as, "What happened?" 

An inquiry into causes is manifestly a greater task than 
the recording of accomplished facts. It is certain that 
I have made some mistakes, probably a great many, in 
analyzing the underlying forces of so complex a thing as 
American social development. The finding of such mis- 
takes will prove nothing as to the method save that the 
leisure of ten very busy years in the life of one individual 
is all too short a time in which to trace to their origin 
the multitude of forces that have been operating in Amer- 
ican history. 

This work has been the more difficult since only a few, 
historians, and these only in recent years, have given 
any attention to this viewpoint. It was, therefore, 
necessary for me to spend much time in the study of 
"original documents, " — the newspapers, magazines, and 
pamphlet literature of each period. In these, rather than 
in the "musty documents" of state, do we find history 
in the making. Here we can see the clash of contending 
interests before they are crystallized into laws and in- 
stitutions. 

I have not sought after new or bizarre facts. I have 



PREFACE 



ix 



sought rather to understand the reasons for those whose 
existence is undisputed. Occasionally I have found 
things which seemed to be neglected in the familiar his- 
tories and have stated these. In my references, also, 
I have tried to name the most accessible works rather 
than to multiply references and strain after scholastic 
effect with many citations of seldom used and almost 
inaccessible material. 

In this connection it should be stated that most of this 
work was written before the publication of the " Docu- 
mentary History of American Society," edited by Dr. 
R. T. Ely and John R. Commons of the University of 
Wisconsin. Otherwise I should have made more fre- 
quent reference to its pages. Thanks to the courtesy 
of these editors, however, I had an opportunity to con- 
sult their notes and the original publications upon which 
that work is based, and this service is here gratefully 
acknowledged. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Conditions leading to Discovery ..... i 
CHAPTER II 

Causes of Colonization 12 

CHAPTER III 

What the Colonists found in America . 21 
CHAPTER IV 

The Colonial Stage 30 

CHAPTER V 

The Growth of Solidarity 55 

CHAPTER VI 

Causes of the Revolution 60 

CHAPTER VII 

The Revolution 70 

CHAPTER VIII 

Formation of the Government 81 

xi 



xii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IX 

PAGE 

Industrial Conditions at the Beginning of the Ameri- 
can Government 100 

CHAPTER X 

Rule of Commerce and Finance 108 

CHAPTER XI 

Rule of Commerce and Frontier 120 

CHAPTER XII 
The Westward March of a People . . . .134 

CHAPTER XIII 
The Birth of the Factory System .... 143 

CHAPTER XIV 
Changing Interests 151 

CHAPTER XV 
The First Crisis — 18 19 160 

CHAPTER XVI 

'Condition of the Workers in the Childhood of 

Capitalism . . .170 

CHAPTER XVII 
The First Labor Movement— 1824-1 836 . . .179 



THE SOCIAL FORCES 

OF THE 

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



CHAPTER I 

CONDITIONS LEADING TO DISCOVERY 

American history is usually made to begin with the 
voyage of Columbus. Since all historical beginnings are 
more or less arbitrary, the especial starting point is of 
no great importance. 

History, like time, its principal element, has neither 
beginning nor end. American social institutions have 
their roots far back in the days to which history does not 
run. With these origins the historian does not deal. 
Here he gives way to the anthropologist, the biologist, 
and the geologist. 

The stream of social evolution which bore the first 
germs of American society had its main source in Europe. 
The social genealogy of America goes back to Greece j 
and Rome, and from these comes down through Germans, 
French, and English, rather than through Mound Builder, 
Pequod, and Iroquois. 

Since the voyages of Columbus form the first link^in 
the chain that was to bring these European influences 
to these shores, a knowledge of European society at the 

B I 



2 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

time of those voyages and the forces that led to them is 
essential to an understanding of American history. 

The "Age of Discovery," in which the voyages of 
Columbus were the most striking, though by no means 
isolated events, came during that period of great social 
transformation known as the Reformation. 

It was the period of the revival of Greek learning, of 
the Decline of the Roman Empire and the Papacy, of the 
disappearance of feudalism and chivalry, when towns and 
nations were growing at the expense of feudal tenures, 
and commerce and manufacturing were taking on new 
forms and new life. It was a day not so much of a re- 
birth of old things as of the birth of those new things 
whose climax, as capitalism, is the dominant feature of 
the United States to-day. 1 

A number of revolutionary inventions were primarily 
responsible for these industrial, political, and religious 
changes. In navigation the compass had but recently 
made it possible to guide a ship beyond the sight of land- 
marks. Without the compass the Mediterranean marked 
the limit of navigation. The " world" surrounding this 
sea was the extent of human knowledge. Now the navi- 
gator could carry his landmarks with him, and the 
Atlantic could be crossed with as certain accuracy as if 
its western shore were visible from the Pillars of Hercules. 

The astrolabe now gave the location of a vessel by its 
relation to astronomical bodies. These inventions broke 
all boundaries to the possibility of exploration. 

The invention of gunpowder and its application to war 
produced equally far-reaching results. The first crude 
firearms sufficed to render the humble foot soldier more 
1 Henry Cabot Lodge, " Close of the Middle Ages," pp. 518-519. 



CONDITIONS LEADING TO DISCOVERY 3 

than a match for the best equipped and armored knight. 
The feudal castle was not impregnable even to the very 
beginnings of artillery. Henceforth military power was 
with him who could maintain the largest number of 
soldiers and not to the strongest arm and the most easily 
defended castle. Gunpowder played a decisive part in 
military affairs at the battle of Crecy in 1346 and the 
siege of Constantinople in 1453. 

To this period also belong the invention of printing 
with movable type, and the manufacture of paper on a 
commercial scale. 1 

These industrial changes tended to bring the merchant/ 
class into a position of social supremacy. Hitherto 
public opinion had despised the merchant. He was fair 
prey for the ruling class of robber barons. Commerce 
was looked upon with disdain. 2 The passing merchant 
was considered a legitimate source of revenue by the 
nobility and their retainers. What would now be classi- 
fied as highway robbery was by all odds the most re- 
spectable industry in central Europe for some centuries 
prior to the discovery of America. 

The ideas of the dominant industrial class, the landed 
nobility, became the standard of morality as preached by / 
the Church. 

"The Church was very hostile to commerce. The 
theologians sought to show that it was unproductive, 
and they especially denounced the trade in money, con- 
fusing the taking of interest with usury. For many of 

1 The first French mill for the manufacture of paper was erected in 
1 189, the first English one in 1330, and the first German one in 1390. 

2 Paul Risson, " Histoire Sommaire du Commerce," p. 156; William 
Clarence Webster, " General History of Commerce," p. 96. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



them, even in the sixteenth century, merchants were 
liars, perjurers, and thieves.' ' 1 

The inventions to which reference has been made were 
changing all this. They were promoting the growth of 
towns, the extension of trade, the knowledge of, and 
therefore the desire for, luxuries which only commerce and 
the merchants could provide. The Crusades took many 
of the nobility away, and left their estates in the hands of 
merchant princes who had taken this property as security 
for the expense of a crusading outfit. 

As the merchants grew in power they became respect- \ 
able, and commerce became a virtue. When merchant 
bankers, like the Fuggers, were able to dictate terms of 
peace and war to kings and emperors, we no longer hear 
the merchants referred to as " liars, perjurers, and 
thieves." 

By the fifteenth century the merchants were the ruling 
class in Europe. The great commercial cities of the 
Mediterranean and of the north of Europe were more 
powerful than many nations, and within these cities rich 
merchants arbitered the political destinies of the known/ 
world. Any merchant-ruled society seeks new markets. 
The pressure for exploration at this period was stronger 
than perhaps at any period before or since. Moreover, 
the whole commercial and social life was being trans- 
formed in such a manner as to make explorations west- 
ward across the Atlantic in search of Oriental markets 
almost inevitable. 2 

1 William Clarence Webster, " General History of Commerce," p. 96. 

2 Cheney, "European Background of American History," pp. 38-39: 
" As Europe in the fifteenth century became more wealthy and more 
familiar with the products of the whole world, as the nobles learned to 



CONDITIONS LEADING TO DISCOVERY 



The commercial life of Europe in the Middle Ages was 
built up around the trade with the Orient. From the 
East came spices, tea, coffee, precious stones, rare fab- 
rics, dyes, perfumes, drugs, carpets, and rugs, — nearly 
all luxuries enjoyed by the rich and the powerful alone. 
In exchange for these the West sent woolen goods, tin, 
copper, lead, arsenic, antimony, and other metals, and 
especially gold and silver, of which large amounts were 
always flowing east to meet the heavy 1 'balance of trade" 
that favored the Orient. 1 

Certain Mediterranean cities became the western 
termini of the long voyage from the East, and distribut- 
ing points for the goods to the local trade centers. Fore- 
most among these cities were Venice and Genoa. 

The stream of goods flowing between these cities and 
the Orient passed through Asia Minor or down the Red 
Sea, and through the Arabian Gulf. During the eleventh, 
twelfth, and thirteenth centuries the Moslems were 
moving north out of Africa and gradually cutting these 
trade routes one by one. When in 1453 Constantinople 
fell into the hands of the Mohammedan Turks, the last 
great route to the Orient was closed to European traders. 2 

Europe did not sit idle while the arteries of its com- 
mercial life were being slowly strangled. How to find 

demand more luxuries, and a wealthy merchant class grew up which was 
able to gratify the same tastes as the nobles, the demand of the West upon 
the East became more insistent than ever. Therefore, the men, the na- 
tion, the government that could find a new way to the East might claim 
a trade of indefinite extent and extreme profit." 

1 Edward P. Cheney, "European Background of American History," 
pp. 9-19; Aloys Schulte, "Geschichte des Mittelalterlichen Handel und 
Verkehr.," Vol. I, pp. 674-675. 

2 Helmholt, "History of the World," Vol. VII, p. 8. 



6 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



or make a trade route between Europe and the Orient 
was a question that so dominated the life of Europe during 
this time as to be the principal force in molding its social 
institutions. Yet for almost three centuries there was 
scarcely a suggestion of seeking a western route. It is 
doubtful if geographical ignorance was even the prin- 
cipal cause for the neglect of westward exploration. 
Knowledge came when it was needed, but no such knowl- 
edge was wanted during these centuries. Such a west- 
ward route would have overthrown existing trade rela- 
tions. Those who profited by such relations were in 
control of society, and could scarcely be expected to 
seek out such a route. 1 

All efforts were directed toward driving back the Mos- 
lems and opening up the eastward route. In this fact 
we find at least one reason for those tremendous move- 
ments of armed men, — the Crusades. The accepted 
explanation of these expeditions is that they were for the 
purpose of " rescuing the holy sepulchre from the profane 
touch of the infidel. " It is at least suggestive that cru- 
sades were not preached until trade routes were endan- 
gered, and that they ceased when commerce underwent 
a transformation that rendered these particular trade 
routes of less importance to the ruling merchant class. 

It was just these changes that paved the way for the 
discovery of America. 

Oriental products, after their arrival in Europe, flowed 
along certain well-defined channels. For ages the goods 
that arrived at Venice and Genoa had moved into north- 
ern Europe along routes whose location had largely de- 

1 David Macpherson, "History of European Commerce with India" 
(London, 1812), pp. 7-8. 



CONDITIONS LEADING TO DISCOVERY 7 



termined the placing of population and the existence of 
many social institutions. One set of routes led north- 
ward across France. At certain intervals great fairs were 
regularly held. These fairs performed the same distrib-^ 
uting service for the commerce of the Middle Ages that 
is performed by the great cities of the present. They 
were, in fact, temporary cities, dissolving when their 
annual function had been performed. 

Another trunk of this commerce led from the terminal 
cities on the Mediterranean over the Alps and down the 
Rhine. Because this route was the feeder of the com- 
merce of all northwestern Europe, the Rhine was sprinkled 
thickly with the castles of the robber barons. The trav- 
eler who passes down the Rhine to-day can measure the 
wealth of this commerce by the ruins of the retreats of 
the castled thieves who preyed upon it. 

Whatever disturbed these trade routes and centers 
would change the whole social structure resting upon . 
them, — the merchants and the barons who robbed them, 
the fairs and the country dependent upon them. 

This European trade system was being revolutionized 
and transformed during the years that the Moslems 
were cutting the trade arteries that united it with the 
Orient. 

Improvements in navigation and shipbuilding had 
made the voyage around Gibraltar cheaper and safer 
than the overland trip across France and Germany. The ' 
discovery of rich mineral deposits in Germany and Eng- 
land, and the development of the English and Flemish 
woolen industry contributed still further to this altera- 
tion. 1 The fairs decayed, the castles on the Rhine grew 
1 Brooks Adams, "The New Empire," pp. 50-55. 



8 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



less profitable, and a new group of commercial cities grew 
on the Baltic and the North seas. 

These cities formed a confederation known as the 
Hanseatic League. Liibeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and 
other important trading centers entered into this League, 
and it grew in power until it possessed its own navy, 
enacted its own laws governing trade relations, made 
treaties, and had many of the attributes of a strong nation. 
The very existence of such a powerful federation com- 
posed of mercantile cities is significant of the dominant 
position of commerce during this period. 

The Hanseatic League soon entered into other fields 
of commerce than those depending upon the Oriental 
goods brought through the Straits of Gibraltar. Its 
merchants not only built up an extensive local trade 
within Europe, but, more significant still in connection 
with the discovery of America, they were developing a 
caravan trade direct with the Orient by way of an over- 
land route through Russia and China. 

The trade of the Hanseatic League and of England, 
Holland, and western Europe in general was essentially 
an ocean trade, developing shipbuilding, training sailors, 
and offering prizes to navigators. Extraordinary efforts 
were made to increase the size of ships. Henry V of 
England experimented in the building of ships that would 
have been considered large at the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century. Boats of 900 tons burden were built at 
the Southampton docks in 1449. 1 

A summary of the situation at the close of the fifteenth 
century will show a combination of forces making for 

1 Cunningham, "Growth of English Industry and Commerce," Vol. I, 
P- 4i3- 



CONDITIONS LEADING TO DISCOVERY 



discovery and exploration. The merchants were the 
ruling class in society. Commerce was built around the 
Oriental trade. The principal routes of this trade were 
closed. Within Europe trade centers and routes had 
shifted to the Atlantic coast. In so shifting there had 
come a development of navigation and shipbuilding 
technique such as was essential to any extensive voyage 
of discovery. Commercial Europe, after facing for cen- 
turies toward the East with its outposts on the Medi- 
terranean, was now looking out across the Atlantic from 
the shore of western Europe. 

This commercial world was devoting all its energies 
to the search for a route to Asia, and there was a general 
tendency to seek this via the Atlantic. Portugal was 
already creeping around Africa. In 1445 Dinnis Diaz 
had sailed beyond Cape Verde, the uttermost point of the 
great westward bend of the African continent. Further 
progress would have been rapid had not a new and 
hitherto unexpected obstacle developed. The explorers 
had reached the source of slave-supply and found this 
trade more profitable than hunting for trade routes to 
India. 

" Hence one expedition after another sent out for pur- 
poses of discovery, returned, bringing tales of failure 
to reach further points on the coast, but laden with human 
booty to be sold. . . . Only the most vigorous pressure, 
exercised on the choicest spirits among the Portuguese 
captains, served to carry discoveries further." 1 

These navigators had gone far enough, however, to 
satisfy the rulers of Portugal that India could be reached 

1 E. P. Cheney, "European Background of American History," 
pp. 66-70; "Cambridge Modern History," Vol. I, pp. 7-16. 



SOCIAL FORCES OF AMERICAN HISTORY 



around Africa, and they were consequently indifferent 
to the plea of Columbus. 1 The merchants of the north- 
ern cities hoped much from the routes which they could 
control through Russia and Siberia, or along the Black 
Sea to China, and were likewise indifferent to westward 
sailing explorations. The Italian merchants were trying 
to bargain with the Moslem whom the Crusades had been 
unable to crush. A western route would only contribute 
to their decline, and Columbus found no favor for his 
plan in his native Genoa. 

There were three commercial nations on the Atlantic 
that would profit directly by a western route. Each 
could hope to control such a route, and none saw any 
possibility of similar advantages in any other route. 
These were England, Spain, and France. Columbus 
made simultaneous application to the first two. Eng- 
land was suspicious of his Spanish affiliations, had plenty 
of navigators who were beginning explorations, and 
therefore rejected his offer, and he sailed under a Spanish 
nag. 

It was an "Age of Discovery. " Explorers were push- 
ing out in all directions. Many had already suggested 
that the road to India lay to the west. Contrary to 
the popularly accepted legends that have become em- 
balmed in textbooks, the rotundity of the earth was quite 
generally accepted in scientific circles. 

1 "Cambridge Modern History," Vol. I, p. 21 : "The circumnaviga- 
tion of Africa was nearly accomplished ; of this route to the wealthy East 
the Portuguese would enjoy a practical monopoly, and it could be effec- 
tively defended. . . . Even if the westward passage were successfully 
accomplished, it was manifest that Portugal would be unable to monopo- 
lize it, and that discovery must ultimately inure for the benefit of the 
stronger maritime nations of western Europe." 



CONDITIONS LEADING TO DISCOVERY n 

The discovery of America by Columbus was but the 
inevitable resultant of the operation of forces that were 
bound to send some one across the Atlantic at about the 
close of the fifteenth century. 



CHAPTER II 



CAUSES OF COLONIZATION 

The movement of the peoples of Europe to the New- 
World was but a part of the strange age-long migration 
of the race toward the setting sun. Great masses of 
people, such as came to America in colonial times, do 
not move without some deep, underlying cause. Men 
and women do not leave their homes and friends and 
brave the dangers of such an ocean voyage as was required 
to reach America before the age of steam without some 
strong, compelling force. 

The greatest admirer of the New World could hardly 
claim that it possessed any powerful attractions at this 
time. The best that it could offer to the first comers 
was a chance to struggle with the forces of nature in 
a state of society but little removed from savagery. Yet 
hundreds of thousands of people did come to America 
during the three centuries after its discovery. 

If there were no powerful attractions drawing them on, 
the cause of their migration must be sought in the land 
from which they came. 

It was a time of social upheaval and revolution in 
Europe. The merchant class was ruling. It was the 
first division of the great capitalist army, — the advance 
guard, whose work it was to explore the world and clear 
the way for the army of occupation, — the industrial 
capitalist. 



CAUSES OF COLONIZATION 



13 



The forces of feudalism were not yet completely con- 
quered, and the new class was compelled constantly to 
fight to hold its position and gain greater power. It was 
a time when nations and religions were being born, and 
when in all fields of social life mighty forces were strug- 
gling for the mastery. 

As fast as the merchant or the manufacturing class 
attained to power, its members set about divorcing the 
former serfs and peasants from the soil, and dissolving 
all old feudal relations, in order that the workers might 
be "free" to hunt for employers. So it was that in 
nearly all the leading European nations the people were 
being driven out of their ancient homes. 

In England, for example, this was a time of great growth 
in the woolen industry. Tenants were being driven off 
the old estates that great sheep pastures might be created. 
Seldom has this process been more vividly depicted than 
in a famous extract from the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas 
More. This was written in 161 5, and the author makes 
one of his characters say concerning the condition in 
contemporary England : — 

"Your sheep, which are naturally mild and easily kept 
in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, 
not only villages, but towns, for, wherever it is found 
that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool 
than ordinary there the nobility and gentry, and even 
those holy men, the abbots, not contented with the old 
rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough 
that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, 
resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the 
course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, re- 
serving only the churches, and inclosed grounds that they 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



may lodge their sheep in them. As if forests and parks 
had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy 
countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitudes ; 
for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his coun- 
try, resolves to inclose many thousands of acres of land, 
the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their 
possessions, by tricks, or by main force, or, being wearied 
out with ill-usage, they are forced to sell them. By 
which means those miserable people, both men and 
women, married and unmarried, old and young, with 
their poor but numerous families (since country business 
requires many hands), are all forced to change their seats, 
not knowing whither to go ; and they must sell almost for 
nothing their household stuff, which could not bring them 
much money, even though they might stay for a buyer." 

All Europe was in a turmoil. The Hundred Years' 
War had just ceased when Columbus discovered America. 
Within the next three centuries nearly every nation of 
Europe was to be engaged in armed conflict, and for much 
of that time war was practically epidemic on the conti- 
nent of Europe. Most of these wars were waged nomi- 
nally around questions of religion. This was simply 
because the industrial revolution, which placed the capi- 
talist class in power, necessarily had its religious ex- 
pression. The Reformation, with its individualism in 
theology, was as perfect a reflex of capitalism as "free 
competition" and laissez faire in economics. "Every 
one for himself and the devil take the hindmost" was 
the motto in industry, economics, religion, and politics, 
and it is noteworthy that the best authorities in each of 
these fields agreed that the majority of mankind is con- 
demned to perdition. 



CAUSES OF COLONIZATION 



15 



Nowhere did these religious wars rage with such fury 
as in Germany, and it was from the locality in which the 
fighting was most destructive that the largest number 
of German emigrants came to the New World. The 
great and fertile Rhine Valley, once the main highway 
of commerce from the Mediterranean to northern Eu- 
rope, and therefore the best hunting ground for the robber 
barons, was now the seat of war after war. The first of 
these was the Thirty Years' War, ended by the peace of 
Westphalia in 1649. Historians vie with one another 
in describing the horrible devastation of this conflict 
upon the locality in which it was waged. Says one 
writer : — 

"Not only were horses and cattle carried away by the 
various armies which shifted back and forth over the 
length and breadth of the land; not only were houses, 
barns, and even crops burned; but the master of the 
house was frequently subjected to fiendish tortures, in 
order that he might thus be forced to discover the hiding 
place of his gold ; or, as often happened, as a punish- 
ment for having nothing to give. At the approach of a 
hostile army the whole village would take to flight, and 
would live for weeks in the midst of forests and marshes, 
or in caves. The enemy having departed, the wretched 
survivors would return to their ruined homes and carry 
on a painful existence with the few remains of their 
former property, until they were forced to fly again by 
new invasions. 

"The years 1635 and 1636 mark the period of the most 
terrible misery. In the years 1 636-1 638 famine and 
pestilence came to add to the suffering. The people tried 



16 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



to satisfy hunger with roots, grass, and leaves; even 
cannibalism became more or less frequent. The gallows 
and the graveyards had to be guarded; the bodies of 
children were not safe from their mothers. So great was 
the destruction that where once were flourishing farms 
and vineyards, now whole bands of wolves roamed un- 
molested." 1 

Even yet the cup of misery of this ill-fated land was not 
filled. The peace signed at Westphalia in 1649 was 
quickly broken so far as the Palatinate was concerned. 
In 1674 another war broke out between France and Hol- 
land, that lasted with but few interruptions and with 
slight changes of combatants for several years more. 
Finally, in 1689 the French determined completely to 
depopulate this country. The result has been stated in 
one of Macaulay's striking paragraphs : — 

"The commander announced to near half a million 
human beings that he granted them three days of grace, 
and that within that time they must shift for themselves. 
Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, 
were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, 
women, and children flying from their homes. . . . The 
flames went up from every market place, every parish 
church, every country seat, within the devoted province. 
The fields where the corn had been sowed were plowed 
up. The orchards were cut down." 

These poor hunted creatures fled by tens of thousands 
to the valleys and broad fields of Pennsylvania, where 
they have preserved their language, customs, religion, 
and traditions even to the present day, presenting the 

1 Oscar Kuhns, "The German and Swiss Settlements of Colonial 
Pennsylvania," pp. 3-9. 



CAUSES OF COLONIZATION 



17 



strange paradox of the oldest " Americans " speaking a 
" foreign" tongue. They fled down the Rhine, crowded 
into Amsterdam, where they became the victims of a 
horde of hyena-like shipping agents, who plundered them 
of their last coin, then shipped them upon overcrowded 
and unseaworthy ships, with such accommodations that 
sometimes half of them died upon the passage, and the 
remainder were landed in America, so indebted to the 
ship's officers that they were sold into temporary slav- 
ery to pay their passage. 1 

Throughout this period, whichever of the warring re- 
ligious sects gained control of any government promptly 
used its power to " stamp out the heresy" of its com- 
petitors. So there was never a lack of religious refugees 
seeking an asylum in America, although the number of 
these has been vastly exaggerated, since the love of re- 
ligious freedom is ordinarily looked upon as a much 
higher motive for emigration than economic necessity. 
It is almost needless to say that each little flock of refu- 
gees was no sooner safely settled in the New World than 
it proceeded to discover new heretics among its own 
members, who were piously driven into the surrounding 
wilderness. 

During the eighteenth century another important 
element was added to the stream of immigration. This 
time it came from Ireland and was composed of that body 
that was to play such an important part in certain phases 

1 For details of these matters, see Frank R. Diffenderfer, "The Ger- 
man Immigration into Pennsylvania through the Port of Philadelphia 
from 1 700-1 775," in Part VII of the "Narrative and Critical History of 
Pennsylvania"; also same author, "The Redemptioners in Pennsyl- 
vania," in German Society Publications, Vol. X ; Geiser, "Redemptioners 
in Pennsylvania." 
c 



1 8 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of American history, the Scotch-Irish. An explanation 
of this movement is contained in the following extract 
from Campbell's work on "The Puritan in Holland, 
England, and America" (Vol. II, p. 427) : — 

"In 1698, upon the demand of the English manufac- 
turers, the woolen industry of Ireland was utterly des- 
troyed. It was claimed that labor was cheaper there 
than in England, and that, therefore, the product could 
be sold at a lower price. This was not to be endured. 
The interference of Parliament was invoked, and by a 
series of repressive acts, the Irish looms were closed. As 
one result of this legislation twenty thousand of the 
Protestant artisans of Ulster, deprived of employment, 
left Ireland for America, carrying with them the remem- 
brance of how English faith, plighted to their forefathers, 
had been broken under the influence of English greed." 

The next step was the enactment by Queen Anne's 
parliament of laws persecuting the Scotch-Irish for their 
religious belief, and this was followed by the establish- 
ment of the "rack-renting" system, under which the 
native Irish, with a lower standard of living, were enabled 
to underbid the former tenants. Add to this a famine 
in 1740, and it is no wonder that this "was by far the 
largest contribution of any race to the population of 
America during the eighteenth century." 1 

It is the same story everywhere. It was not because 
America drew them on, but because Europe drove them 
out, that the colonists came to America. 

Thousands of the poorer colonists sold themselves for 
a series of years as slaves in order to pay the passage 
money that had been advanced by the shipowners. In 

1 John R. Commons, "Races and Immigrants in America," pp. 34-36. 



CAUSES OF COLONIZATION 



19 



fact, John R. Commons estimates that probably one half 
of all the immigrants of the colonial period landed as 
" indentured servants." 

There were three classes of " white slaves" in colonial 
times. The larger class, to which reference has just been 
made, were those who agreed with the masters of some 
vessel that in return for a passage to the New World the 
shipowner should have the right to sell the passenger 
into servitude for a definite number of years. In the 
majority of cases this sale was made at the wharf, and 
the newspapers of the time regularly contain advertise- 
ments of the arrival of ships with " indentured servants" 
to be sold. In case no buyers came to the ship the pas- 
sengers were sold to agents, who chained them together 
and peddled them through the towns and villages. 

Another large class of slaves was made up of criminals, 
sent here largely from England, and sold to the colonists 
for a term of years. 

As the raising of cotton and tobacco and some other 
staple crops became more profitable, and the close vicin- 
ity of the forest with free land made it difficult to keep 
employees at the beggarly wages which prevailed, the 
demand for workmen became so great that a regular 
trade in the stealing of persons for colonial slavery sprung 
up in England. So prevalent did this practice become 
that it added a new phrase to the language. Those who 
stole these children for export to America were called 
"spirits," and from this came the phrase to "spirit away": 

"Children and adults alike were lured or forced upon 
vessels in the harbor, or carried to the numerous cook- 
shops in the neighborhood of the wharves in the principal 
seaports, and here they were kept in close confinement 



20 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

until sold to merchants or masters of ships which were 
about to sail for the colonies. As a result of this spiriting 
away, frauds became so common, that in 1664 the Com- 
mittee for Foreign Plantations decided to interfere. . . . 
A committee was appointed whose duty it was to register 
the names and ages of all who wished to emigrate to 
America. But this did not put a stop to the practice. 
Ten years after this act became a law, it was stated that 
10,000 persons were annually spirited away from Eng- 
land by kidnappers." 

Finally more than 200,000 negro slaves were stolen from 
their homes in Africa by Dutch or New England traders 
and sold to the planters of the Southern colonies. His- 
torians have told us much of the discomforts of the voy- 
agers on the Mayflower, but they have had little to say 
of the horrors endured by the miserable fugitives from 
the Palatinate, and still less of the terrible sufferings in- 
flicted upon the helpless children stolen from their homes 
in London to become the slaves of American planters 
and farmers. 



CHAPTER III 



WHAT THE COLONISTS POUND IN AMERICA 

Social institutions are born of two elements, — the 
land and the people. In the childhood of society these 
two elements in action and reaction are almost the only 
factors to be considered. Later the inertia of social 
institutions may become a far more powerful factor in 
social evolution than either of the primary factors. 1 We 
have seen something of the character of those who peopled 
this continent. We have learned a little of the society 
from which they came, and of the forces that sent them 
across the ocean. They were now to build up a society 
in a new world. As materials to this end. they brought 
with them a vast store of things that mankind had been 
countless ages in acquiring: the knowledge of reading, 
and printing and gunpowder, of making tools of iron and 
steel, of spinning and weaving and making of clothing, 
social and governmental institutions, churches, laws, 
creeds, beliefs, prejudices, superstitions. All these things, 
developed in the complex civilization of Europe, were 
now transplanted to a world where they had hitherto 
been unknown. 

It was as if some giant hand had gathered a multitude 
of seeds of all kinds and manner of plants from all the 
ends of the earth and had flung them at random upon the 

1 J. Paul Goode, "The Human Response to the Physical Environ- 
ment," in the Journal of Geography, Vol. Ill, No. 7. 

21 



22 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

American hills and plains. Some would never sprout; 
others would die with the first frost, or be shriveled with 
overmuch heat. Some would be drowned with too much 
rain, while others would lack the tropical downpour 
essential to life. Some would find the new conditions so 
exceptionably favorable that they would grow to giant 
weeds, choking out other plants of greater intrinsic value. 

Let us look upon the land where this plentiful load of 
old achievements, beliefs, and institutions are to be 
thrown, that we may see which are most suited to sur- 
vive and flourish, and where each kind may reach its 
highest development. 

The Atlantic coast is a good colonial seed bed. Con- 
trast its abundant harbors, long tidal rivers, and general 
open appearance with the smooth, closed wall of the 
Pacific coast. Here is room for many communities to 
grow up independent of one another. It is almost an 
axiom of history that peninsulas form a sort of social 
hotbeds in which nations grow rapidly to a high stage of 
maturity. A handful of colonists could scarcely have 
been thrown at any spot from Maine to Georgia without 
rinding a favorable opening in which to lodge and sprout 
and grow. 

In the days when the colonists came to America, and, 
indeed, in all the years before that time, rivers were the 
principal means of communication, even in old countries, 
while in new countries they were almost the only high- 
ways of commerce and travel. The region in which the 
first American colonies were located was amply provided 
with these natural highways. Abundant navigable rivers 
afforded access far into the interior. Only in New Eng- 
land was the "fall line" so close to the ocean as to give 



WHAT THE COLONISTS FOUND IN AMERICA 23 

rise to the short swift rivers which confine settlement to the 
coast and supply power to turn the wheels of industry. 

An examination of these rivers will tell us much of the 
history of the region they drain. The broad deep Hud- 
son and Susquehanna tapped country rich in fur in the 
beginning, which was later to become a bountiful farming 
region. These facts suggest that some day an Astor 
should rise and rule at the mouth of one of these rivers 
and that both should become the seat of great commercial 
cities. The Rappahannock and . the James ebbed and 
flowed with the tide for many miles through rich alluvial 
silt, which was to be marked off into broad plantations, 
first for tobacco and later for cotton. Ocean vessels could 
sail up these tidewater streams to the wharves of the 
rich planters, who ruled over armies of chattel slaves 
and sold their products directly in foreign markets. 

When society was so closely connected with the tilling 
of the soil, the character of that element played an im- 
portant part in determining social evolution. The gla- 
ciated clay of New England with its coating of ice- 
brought bowlders was difficult of cultivation but slow 
of exhaustion. It invited small permanent farms, with 
such small profits as to require an auxiliary industry like 
fishing, hunting, or trading to maintain a living. The 
alluvial silt of the South was the opposite in its charac- 
teristics. Easy of conquest in the beginning, it invited 
the cultivation of staple crops with high profits which 
quickly exhausted the soil, compelling continuous change 
of location. Slavery was almost as impossible under the 
former conditions as it was inevitable under the latter. 

Climate plays its part in deciding historical events. 
It would be as hard to imagine the individualistic, ener- 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



getic, dogmatic Puritan of New England preaching, 
righting, trading beneath the torrid sun of the Carolinas, 
as to think of the fox-hunting, gambling, slaveholder 
building his plantation mansion with its broad verandas 
on the bleak New England hills. 

While the various peninsulas and river systems into 
which the Atlantic coast is divided favored a high de- 
velopment of individual colonies, and tended to produce 
and emphasize local peculiarities, the ocean which con- 
nected all the colonies constituted a broad and ever open 
highway that bound them together. Whatsoever in- 
terests like commerce and fishing required the use of this 
common means of transportation tended to unite the 
various colonies, and we shall find these interests playing 
a prominent part in the formation of a united nation. 
As each colony crept back from the ocean and away 
from the river, its peoples came into contact with those 
of its neighbors. At the headwaters of the rivers there 
would soon arise a body of people more closely united to 
each other than to any single colony. This process was 
hastened by the fact that there extended along the full 
length of the settlements a broad mountain range that 
set a limit to western expansion during most of the colo- 
nial period. Once the Indians had been driven beyond 
the Appalachians, these mountain ranges formed a pro- 
tecting barrier for the colonies against further attacks. 
This protecting barrier to expansion fostered colonial 
solidarity. It hastened the evolution of society to that 
partially self-supporting stage, which rendered possible 
the common action that resulted in political independence 
and national existence. To understand what the absence 
of such a limiting and protecting barrier might have 



WHAT THE COLONISTS FOUND IN AMERICA 25 

meant, it is only necessary to glance at the French spread- 
ing over all Canada and the Mississippi Valley, forming 
no political organizations, and establishing no social or 
political unity between their widely scattered settlements. 
In the first stages of industrial evolution only the "ex- 
tractive industries" are developed. These are the in- 
dustries that extract raw material directly from the earth, 
as contrasted with those that work up such raw material 
into the finished products used by a more complex civili- 
zation. In any such industrial stage the social organiza- 
tion will depend quite largely upon the nature of the raw 
materials to be " extracted." 

Off the coast of New England lay the Newfoundland 
Banks, the richest fishing grounds in the world. From 
Cape Cod to the Arctics there stretched away the "green 
pastures" of the whale. These two facts determined 
political and military relations, affected treaties, re- 
peatedly threatened war, determined colonial and national 
legislation for more than three centuries, and set in motion 
streams of influence that even to-day mightily affect the 
current of industrial and social life. 

The Atlantic coast plain, the Appalachians, and the 
whole eastern bank of the Mississippi Valley were cov- 
ered with a dense growth of forest. It is almost impos- 
sible to exaggerate the influence which this fact played 
in colonial history. It was the pine forests of New Eng- 
land, in combination with the near-by fishing grounds, 
that laid the foundation for the great commercial life 
of that section. Although the choicest trees were marked 
with the "broad arrow" of the king to indicate that they 
were to be cut only in order to be shipped to England for 
use in the royal navy, yet the colonists were seldom 



26 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

troubled with an overly tender legal conscience, and many 
a "broad arrow" was removed and the tree which it 
marked converted into masts for some New England 
merchantman. 

The forest was at once an obstacle to settlement and 
cultivation, a shelter for the Indian, the home of fur- 
bearing and meat-carrying animals, and a regulator of 
climate and flow of water. Just how great a part the 
forest has played in American history we are only be- 
ginning to appreciate when it has almost disappeared. 

Hunting, both for food and furs; lumbering; ship- 
building; and the manufacture of such diverse products 
as turpentine, charcoal, and pearlash; the blockhouse 
for defense, and the log cabin for shelter, — all these 
various and most characteristic features of American 
life owe their existence to this great forest belt. 

To follow but one of these features, and that not the 
most important, but a little way along its ramifications : 
The woods teemed with animals, large and small, whose 
furry coverings were coveted by man — or woman. In 
pursuit of this fur men explored rivers, founded cities, 
cut the trails through the forest that marked the lines of 
a future commerce, and sketched in outline the geographic 
basis of American social life. The fur trade made and 
modified Indian policies, directed the course of popula- 
tion, located national boundary lines, laid the founda- 
tion of much of our present financial organization, 
created the first of the race of American millionaires, 
and in a hundred other ways set its stamp upon our social 
institutions. 

Throughout colonial times agriculture was the basic 
dominant industry in all the colonies, with the possible 



WHAT THE COLONISTS FOUND IN AMERICA 27 

exception of some of the fishing communities of New 
England. A large number of the staple crops of Europe 
were successful here, including wheat, flax, apples, and 
grapes. Most of the domestic animals of Europe were 
transplanted to this country with little change. America 
gave three new plants to agriculture, — corn, tobacco, 
and potatoes, — and it far exceeds all the rest of the world 
in the production of another — cotton. The first two 
and the last one have made and unmade social systems 
and governmental policies, and have determined the 
methods of life for great sections of the population. A 
complete account of any one of these three would give 
a far more accurate history of America (though still 
warped and incomplete) than the biographies of any half- 
dozen " great men" that have lived on this continent. 

Only two animals that are peculiar to America have 
had any great influence on agriculture, — the turkey and 
the bison. Until within the last decade the influence of 
the latter was similar to that of all other wild animals, 
merely as a competitor in supplying meat, but attempts 
at domestication and cross breeding with domestic cattle 
would now indicate that this animal may be destined 
to play a more important part in the future, unless the 
slight remnant of his blood is too small to found a new 
race. 

America was not an untrodden land when English- 
man and Spaniard first set foot upon its shores. Thinly 
scattered over its vast reaches there lived a race, just 
evolving out of the hunting and fishing stage into that of 
a rude agriculture. 

The Indian has exercised a profound influence upon 
American history. He was the ablest savage fighter the 



28 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

world has ever known. Man for man he has taken his 
weapons from the white man and yet held his own in the 
centuries-long battle from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
He has retreated before superior numbers. He has never 
acknowledged defeat. The existence of a relentless 
watchful foe compelled compactness of settlement, de- 
termined the location of towns and villages, and devel- 
oped a race of frontier fighters that proved the decisive 
influence in every war in which this nation has been en- 
gaged. The Indian trails marked the roads that were 
followed by the traders, the makers of highways, and the 
builders of railroads, each in turn. Tobacco and corn 
had both been domesticated by the Indian, and he taught 
the white man how to raise them. In the fur trade the 
Indian was always an important factor, and the trade 
with Indian tribes was for more than two centuries an 
important part of American commercial life. 

It has been generally accepted by historians, based upon 
the observation of almost countless examples, that when 
two unlike nations of unequal strength come into con- 
flict, the succeeding steps will be: invasion, conquest, 
enslavement, amalgamation. The relation of the Indian 
to the white race has lacked the last two steps. Although 
the present population of the United States is the most 
composite in the world, it contains little more than a 
trace of the blood of the original inhabitants. Neither 
was the Indian transformed into a slave, as has been the 
case with multitudes of conquered peoples. This was 
not because of any lack of inclination in that direction 
by the white invaders. From the New England Puritans, 
who divided up the Pequod women and children after 
massacring the men, and sold King Philip's son to West 



WHAT THE COLONISTS FOUND IN AMERICA 29 



Indian sugar planters, to the Spaniards, who, with whips 
and hot irons, drove a multitude to a horrible death in 
the mines of Central and South America, attempts to 
enslave the Indian were never lacking. Yet so far as the 
race was concerned these attempts were a striking failure. 
The Indian would die, but he would not serve. During 
the time of Southern negro slavery if it became known 
that ever so little Indian blood flowed in the veins of a 
slave, his value quickly fell off or entirely disappeared, 
for it was recognized that it was always but a question 
of time until either the master or the slave would die a 
violent death. 

Had the Indian not possessed this characteristic, how 
different American history might have been. With a 
servile native population, acclimated to all portions of 
the country, the negro need never have been stolen from 
Africa; slavery would have been a national instead of 
a sectional institution; the Indian would have been 
absorbed by the whites or bred in slavery until his num- 
bers were equal to, or exceeded, those of his masters, and 
— but when one enters the realm of historical "ifs, " there 
is no place to stop. 

We have seen something of what the colonists found 
when they came to America. We have said nothing of 
the minerals and the natural wealth that were found at 
a later time. This chapter is meant only to suggest some 
of the things that will be discussed at much greater 
length, as occasion arises. Yet the history of America 
is just the story of how these raw materials, natural re- 
sources, indigenous products, and peoples were used by 
those who came to this country, and by their descendants 
in satisfying their wants. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 

There is much in common in the course of social 
evolution through which each of the colonies passed. 
Each was working out the problem of the creation of a 
new social unit with much the same materials. In the 
beginning the colony was generally established as an 
outlying possession of some private trading company. 
The London Company and the Plymouth Company were 
private corporations to which nearly all of what is now 
the United States was assigned as private property. Had 
the first ships sent out discovered gold, or realized the 
rich profits to be made in furs, the whole history of this 
country would possibly have been different. It is within 
the realm of the possible that these companies might 
have built up gigantic private enterprises with govern- 
mental functions like that of the East India Company in 
British India. That this idea is by no means fanciful 
is shown by the history of the Hudson Bay Company 
in the much less favorable location of northern Canada. 

The first expeditions sent out by these companies did 
not find gold. They did not find profits of any kind. 
Consequently, the companies soon lost interest and the 
colonies were permitted to work out their own salvation. 

The course of evolution pursued in each colony bears 
a striking resemblance to the line of development that 

30 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



31 



the race has followed. Caution is needed in applying 
this or any other historical analogy, because the colonists 
were not primitive savages, and they did not evolve 
independent of the remainder of the world. 

In the beginning nearly every colony, being confronted 
with the problem of maintaining a small group, composed 
of individuals of nearly equal strength, in the midst of 
a hostile environment, solved that problem as the race 
solved it at the same stage by the adoption of primitive 
communism. As soon as the colony advanced to the 
point where division of labor and the importation of 
domestic animals with diversified industry made its 
appearance, communism was naturally discarded. It 
had not " failed" or " succeeded," or been "rejected" by 
the colonists any more than the similar stage in race 
history. 1 

Very early the colonies began to develop important 
differences, which were destined to have the most far- 
reaching consequences. It therefore becomes necessary 
to consider them separately, or at least by sections. 
This division and the peculiar development of the various 
sections depends largely upon geographical conditions, 
some of which already have been considered. 

In each stage of social evolution the size of the social 
unit depends first of all upon the extent and character of 
the transportation system upon which it rests. During 
colonial times there were three systems of commercial 
communication : (1) up and down the rivers within each 
colony ; (2) along the coast between the colonies ; (3) for- 

1 Doyle, " English Colonies in America," Vol. I, pp. 55-64, passim, 
where this evolution is traced, but with a complete misunderstanding of 
its explanation. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



eign, across the ocean. 1 All except the last of these have 
to-day been overshadowed by the public highways and 
the railroads. 

Such a system, or combination of systems, or lack of 
system, according to the point of view, tended to the 
creation of a series of almost isolated societies with very 
different characteristics. Each such society had its own 
seaport which evolved into the commercial, financial, and 
political head of the colony. From this city the river 
reached into the interior, determining the direction and 
extent of settlement, and acting as the common carrier for 
the produce of the forest and later of the farms that 
grew up along its banks. The colony as a whole, in the 
beginning at least, was constantly recruited from across 
the ocean and procured many of its necessities from the 
same source. During this time it was really in much 
closer touch with Europe than with perhaps its nearest 
neighbor among the other colonies. 2 

Aside from this individual isolation, the colonies as a 
whole fell into three well-marked groups. These groups 
were New England, the Middle Colonies (between the 
Hudson and the Potomac), and the Southern, lying 
south of the latter river. 

1 Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," Vol. I, 
PP. 376-377- 

2 "Each of the thirteen original colonies had one or more seaports, and 
the main current of trade existing during the entire colonial era, and in 
some respects up to much later periods, was between these ports and the 
interior districts of the colonies in which they were respectively located, 
on the one hand, and the outer world, via the ocean, on the other. Com- 
merce between the colonies was of limited magnitude, and originally nearly 
all the movements made from one colony to another were conducted in 
shallops, sloops, schooners, and other sea-going vessels." — I. L. Ringwalt, 
"Development of Transportation Systems in the United States," p. 3. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



33 



In each of these colonies a somewhat different group of 
Europeans was working out the problem of a new society 
with the peculiar natural environment of its locality. 

New England was settled in the beginning largely by 
the Puritans, the English expression of the Reformation. 
They belonged mostly to the middle class, were generally 
fairly well educated, extremely individualistic in their 
ideas, and bigoted in their religion. These characteristics 
were rather accentuated than otherwise by being trans- 
planted to a new country, and by the fact that whole 
congregations came together. 

In its physical features New England possessed sev- 
eral points that differentiated her quite sharply from 
the other colonies. The point where the break comes 
in the rivers between the tidewater level and the rise of 
the continental mainland is much closer to the ocean 
than in the more southern portion of the Atlantic coast. 
The rivers could be navigated but a short distance. On 
the other hand, this gave rise to numerous water powers, 
close to the ocean, at the head of navigation, which later 
marked the seat of manufacturing cities. "With the 
exception of the Connecticut, therefore," says Semple, 1 
"which added fertile meadow lands to the attraction of 
the fur trade, the streams of New England, in conse- 
quence of their limited basins and rapid, broken courses, 
scarcely affected early settlement." 

There was a negative way in which this absence of 
navigable rivers affected New England life. In the other 
colonies there was one river around which the life of the 
colony was grouped and which formed the main highway 

1 Ellen Churchill Semple, "American History and its Geographic 
Conditions," p. 24. 

D 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



into the interior and for commerce within the colony 
itself. The absence of such rivers in New England kept 
the settlements close to the coast, and made the ocean 
the main carrier for all commerce, local or foreign. The 
geographical isolation from the remainder of the Atlantic 
coast led to an intensive growth of the New England 
society. 

" Mountains and straggling, rugged hills separated her 
from the great northern valleys. Until the middle of 
our century, when iron ways and steam-driven carriages 
pierced the mountain chains, carrying exchanges into 
the Hudson, Mohawk, and the St. Lawrence valleys, 
New England was a coastwise community, physically 
forced into the economic development of the Atlantic 
coast." 1 

This peculiar isolated, intensive growth so emphasized 
industrial and social institutions as to give them a re- 
markable power of impressing themselves upon after- 
time. In this regard New England society was much 
like carefully bred live stock in that it showed a great 
power of persistence and capacity of impressing its 
characteristics upon its descendants even when the 
degree of relationship is extremely small. 

During the first twenty years after the famous landing 
at Plymouth Rock in 1620, New England life rested al- 
most entirely upon crude agriculture, fishing, and the 
trade with the Indians. Manufactured articles were 
brought from England, either in exchange for furs or 
else as a part of the possessions of the steady stream of 
immigrants. Agriculture was confined largely to the 

1 Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," Vol. I, 
pp. 15-16- 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



35 



raising of Indian corn under the instruction of friendly 
Indians. 

In 1624 the first cattle were brought over by Governor 
Winslow. These increased rapidly and were augmented 
by new shipments from England until by " 1632 no farmer 
was satisfied to do without a cow; and there was in 
New England, not only a domestic, but an export, demand 
for the West Indies, which led to breeding for sale. But 
the market was soon overstocked, and the price of cattle 
went down from fifteen and twenty pounds to five 
pounds ; and milk was a penny a quart." 1 This latter 
statement about the price of milk means very little, as 
cows were seldom milked at this time, being raised prin- 
cipally for their hides, and secondly for meat, and only 
very incidentally for their milk. 2 

During this period the machinery of commercial and 
industrial life and therefore of society in general was ex- 
tremely crude. The trade with the Indians was carried 
on largely by barter, or by the use of the shell money 
called " wampum," which the colonists adopted from the 
red men. The very fact that such a primitive currency 
could be used in common by the two races speaks vol- 
umes for the nearness to which they came to living upon 
the same social stage. In addition to " wampum" 
various commodities, especially corn and beaver skins, 
were constituted mediums of exchange by colonial law 
during this period. 3 

1 Albert S. Bolles, "Industrial History of the United States," p. 115. 

2 Ibid., p. 116. 

3 Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," Vol. I, pp. 
32-47, is a very full discussion of the function of wampum in colonial com- 
merce with the Indians. 



36 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



This use of various commodities as " money" is char- 
acteristic of an early stage of social organization. It is 
one through which the white race in other lands passed 
many centuries ago. There was one feature of the emi- 
gration from England that tended to prevent further 
reversion to lower social stages. The colonists came in 
groups, generally composed of a single church congre- 
gation. This transplanted the nucleus of a social or- 
ganization directly to the New World. 

About 1640 a change took place in England which had 
direct and far-reaching effects upon New England. The 
struggle between the Puritans and the Cavaliers broke 
into open warfare, in which the former, under Cromwell, 
were victorious. Naturally there was no longer any 
necessity for emigration on the part of the Puritans. 
On the contrary, it was now the turn of the Cavaliers to 
emigrate, but as the majority of these went to the South- 
ern colonies we need not concern ourselves with them 
just now. 

The stoppage of immigration meant many things to 
the colony. Each new family had brought with it a 
supply of manufactured articles for its own use at least. 
The ships which brought them carried similar articles 
for sale to the other colonists. A ship laden with immi- 
grants could afford to carry freight cheaper and make 
much more frequent trips than one without passengers. 
As a result of this condition Weeden 1 tells us that, — 
" There were many sellers, few buyers, and hardly any 
currency. There was a privation, not from scarcity, but 
it was enforced in the midst of abundance. Wares would 
not command wares, money there was none, and prices 
1 Loc. cit., Vol. I, pp. 165-166. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



37 



fell to one half, yea, to a third, and staggered at last at 
about one quarter of the old standard." 

As we shall see many times in the history of this coun- 
try, when a nation is thus suddenly thrown back upon 
its own resources, it begins to develop new lines of in- 
dustry. In this case the colonists were forced forward 
into a new industrial and social stage. New England 
now entered upon the road of diversified industry, the 
next step beyond primitive agriculture. The directions 
that the energies of the colony took were threefold, — 
domestic manufacturing, fishing, and shipbuilding. 

May 13, 1640, the General Court of Massachusetts, 
passed an order to ascertain — 

"What men and women are skillful in braking, spin- 
ning, and weaving; what means for the providing of 
wheels ; and to consider with those skillful in that manu- 
facture, what course may be taken to raise the materials 
and produce the manufacture." 1 

In 1646 a patent was granted to Joseph Jenks of the 
same colony for an improvement in the manufacture of 
scythes for the cutting of grass. He succeeded in produc- 
ing so perfect a tool for this purpose that little improve- 
ment was made in his design for nearly three centuries. 2 

In 1648 an iron furnace in Lynn, Massachusetts, was 
turning out eight tons of iron a week. During the next 
ten years furnaces were set up at several other places in 
New England, all making use of the "bog ore" to be 
found in the marshes. 3 

1 W. R. Bagnall, "The Textile Industries of the United States," p. 4. 

2 Weeden, "Economic and Social History of New England," Vol. I, 
p. 183. 

3 A. S. Bolies, "Industrial History of the United States," p. 194. 



38 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



All these branches of manufacture grew steadily during 
the next hundred years. But faster than any of them 
grew fishing and shipbuilding and all manner of indus- 
trial life connected with the sea, until one writer declares 
of the people of New England at this time that, "The 
world never saw a more amphibious population.' ' 1 

The first sawmill was built at Salmon Falls, New 
Hampshire, in 1663, and was the beginning of the great 
shipbuilding industry of New England. 2 

All industrial life centered around the sea. Some- 
times a farming, fishing sailor, such as made up much 
of the population, would, with the aid of his neighbors, 
build a ship at the mouth of some creek, launch it during 
the spring freshet, and load it with rum for the African 
coast, fish for the Canaries, or, more frequently, with 
pitch, tar, hemp, and long masts for England. Here 
ship and cargo would both be sold, while the former 
owner, builder, and captain would ship as a sailor on a 
return voyage, bringing home the proceeds of his venture. 

One of the best established routes of colonial trade was 
the famous " rum-molasses-slaves " triangular voyage. 
Loading with rum from one of the host of distilleries that 
filled the coast towns of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 
the good Puritan captain would set sail for the African 
coast with instructions to "put plenty of water in ye 
rum, and use short meusure as much as possible," as 
one letter which has been preserved quaintly reads. In 
Africa the rum was exchanged for "black ivory," as the 
poor, entrapped negroes were called. Storing this mer- 

1 Willis J. Abbot, "American Merchant Ships and Sailors," p. 8. 

2 Eleanor L. Lord, " Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies 
of North America," John Hopkins Univ. Studies in Hist, and Pol. Set. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



39 



chandise away in his hold, much as he had previously 
stored the hogsheads of rum, the ship would set sail for 
the West Indies or the Carolinas, where such of the cargo 
as had not died on the terrible "middle passage" would 
be traded for molasses, from which in turn more rum 
could be manufactured. 

A society built upon such foundations could hardly 
be expected to attain the perfection which tradition has 
ascribed to Puritan New England. That it was some- 
thing quite the reverse from the legendary society of 
most school histories is shown from the following quota- 
tion from Weeden, himself a New England writer : — 

"We have seen molasses and alcohol, rum and slaves, 
gold and iron, in a perpetual and unholy round of com- 
merce. All society was fouled in this lust; it was in- 
flamed by the passion for wealth ; it was callous to the 
wrongs of imported savages or displaced barbarians. . . . 
Cool, shrewd, sagacious merchants vied with punctilious, 
dogmatic priests in promoting this prostitution of in- 
dustry." 

With the change in the industrial base the appearance 
of commerce and manufacture and exchange, the whole 
social organization was transformed. One of the first 
signs of this was the adoption of a "money economy." 
"In the year 1670 Massachusetts repealed her law, 'now 
injurious/ which made corn, cattle, etc., the equivalent 
for money." 1 Nearly twenty years before (1652) the 
same colony had established a mint at which the famous 
"Pine Tree Shillings" had been coined. 

These first signs of industrial self-sufficiency were ac- 
companied by the beginnings of political unrest, and the 

1 Weeden, "Economic History of New England," Vol. I, p. 326. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



growth of a general independent feeling. One of the 
phases of this was the establishment of the New England 
Confederation in 1643, comprising all the New England 
colonies, except Rhode Island, which was kept out be- 
cause of the religious heresy of its founder, Roger Wil- 
liams, and his followers. 

New England has been hailed as the birthplace of 
social equality, and orators and superficial historians 
are prone to trace all democratic institutions back to 
the famous "New England town meeting." The fact 
is that in the beginning these colonies, so far as local 
government is concerned, were theocratic autocracies. 
Only those who were property holders and members of 
the Established Church had any voice whatever even 
in these town meetings. The social gradations with 
their privileges were carefully determined by law, even 
to the sort of clothing which each social class was per- 
mitted to wear, and the places which its members were 
to occupy in the " meeting-house. " As soon as even the 
beginnings of a wage-working class appeared, the wages 
of its members were fixed by law, and their position care- 
fully defined. 1 

When this stage had been reached in each of the col- 
onies, they began to have a common development which 
can be better traced as a whole after considering the 
course by which the others arrived at this same stage. 

1 Weeden, loc. tit., Vol. I, pp. 98-99 ; McMaster, "The Acquirement of 
Political, Social, and Industrial Rights of Man in America," pp. 31-36, 
on general condition of colonial laborers. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



41 



Virginia and the Southern Colonies 

When we cross the Potomac, the physical conditions 
are so different that although the people who came as 
colonists were practically the same as those of New Eng- 
land, yet the industrial and social organization which 
they developed was strikingly different. Something 
has already been said of the physiographic conditions of 
Virginia. There is one phase, however, that is so strik- 
ingly described by John Fiske in his "Old Virginia and 
Her Neighbors" as to be worth quoting. He says (Vol. 
I, p. 263) : — 

"The country known as 'tidewater Virginia' is a kind 
of sylvan Venice. Into the depths of the shaggy wood- 
land for many miles on either side of the great bay the 
salt tide ebbs and flows. One can go surprisingly far 
inland on a seafaring craft, while with a boat there are 
but few plantations on the old York peninsula to which 
one cannot approach very near." 

This broad alluvial belt was in striking contrast with 
the narrow strip of glaciated clay that fringed the coast 
of New England. The " f all line" was distant several 
hundred miles from the coast ; there were no rich fishing 
banks within easy sailing distance, and the nature and 
the form of agriculture which arose made for dispersion 
and not for concentration of population. 

In the beginning Virginia was ruled by a trading com- 
pany seeking profits for its shareholders. For the first 
few years there was little sign of any profits. In fact the 
colonists repeatedly came within a narrow margin of 
starvation. Then came the discovery of the possibilities 
in the cultivation of a plant that was destined to form 



42 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the basis of the industrial life of Virginia for many years 
to come. This was tobacco, of whose influence Henry 
Cabot Lodge says : — 

"Tobacco founded this colony and gave it wealth. It 
was the currency of Virginia, and as bad a one as could 
be devised, and fluctuating with every crop, yet it re- 
tained its place as a circulating medium despite the most 
strenuous efforts to introduce specie. The clergy were 
paid and the taxes levied in tobacco. The whole pros- 
perity of the colony rested upon it for more than a cen- 
tury, and it was not until the period of the Revolution 
that other crops began to come in and to replace it. The 
fluctuations in tobacco caused the first conflict with Eng- 
land, brought on by the clergy, and paved the way to 
resistance. In tobacco the Virginian estimated his income 
and the value of everything he possessed ; and in its 
various functions, as well as in its methods of cultivation, 
it had strong effect upon the character of the people. 

"Tobacco planting made slaves necessary and profit- 
able, and fastened slavery upon the province. The 
method of cultivation, requiring intense labor and watch- 
ing for a short period, and permitting complete idleness 
for the rest of the year, fostered habits which alternated 
feverish exertion and languid indolence." 1 

The discovery that the cultivation of tobacco for the 
European market afforded a means by which the colony 
could be made to produce a profit at once aroused the 
interest of the stockholders of the company. So long as 
the colonists were starving and calling constantly for 
relief there was little interest on the part of the London 
owners of the corporation. But now there was the possi- 

1 See also Fiske, "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," Vol. I, p. 227. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



43 



bility of building up a gigantic and powerful commercial 
monopoly. Just what the result of the exploitation of 
this crop by a great trading corporation owning the entire 
southern half of what is now the United States would 
have been we shall never have an opportunity to know. 
Political considerations (resting, to be sure, upon economic 
conditions) in England did not permit the experiment to 
be tried. King James I was having a hard time to keep 
down the rising power of the commercial class. He was 
intriguing with reactionary Spain and threatening and 
fighting rebellious subjects at home in his efforts to that 
end. Naturally the founders of the Virginia Company 
were of the rising commercial class. They were estab- 
lishing the forms of democracy and representative gov- 
ernment in their colony. The first representative body 
in America was the Virginia " House of Burgesses," which 
was convened in 1619. James was assured that the 
London Company was but a "seminary to a seditious 
Parliament/ ' 1 and he therefore revoked their charter, — 
the sacredness of corporation property not having as yet 
become a fundamental principle of jurisprudence. 

Virginia, consequently, was left to work out her salva- 
tion, like New England, as an almost independent prov- 
ince. 

The most striking feature of Southern agriculture was 
the great size of the individual estates. This rested upon 
the plantation system, a system inseparable from a 
one-crop or staple agriculture in an alluvial country. 
The first members of the London Company were given 
grants of large extent, and a method was soon provided 
by which these could be extended to almost any size. 

1 Ibid., Chap. VI. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



" Every shareholder who met the cost of importing an 
able-bodied laborer, man or woman, was entitled to fifty 
acres in the first division and fifty additional in the 
second. . . . Unscrupulous planters obtained grants 
in consideration of passage money paid for members of 
their own families or for their own journeys to and from 
England. The land offices grew corrupt, and soon it was 
not deemed necessary to bring evidence of passage paid. 
A small fee handed to the secretary insured the solicited 
grant with no questions asked. This practice became 
so general that it was finally (1705) sanctioned bylaw. . . . 
At the close of the century the average size of a Virginia 
estate was seven hundred acres, and many a planter 
owned thousands." 1 

These estates were extremely profitable when worked 
with the slaves brought by the New England and British 
traders. A body of wealthy planters arose resting upon 
a subject population. Tobacco being an export crop, 
and demanding the entire energies of those raising it, 
other industries were neglected, and the South became 
dependent upon the New England shipbuilders and mer- 
chants. The exhaustive methods of agriculture com- 
pelled frequent abandonment of the old fields and the 
conquest of new ones from the forest. 

Early in the eighteenth century the larger portion of 

1 Coman, "Industrial History of the United States," p. 33. Greene's 
" Provincial America " says : " Governor Spottswood signed on one 
occasion several grants of ten, twenty, and forty thousand acres, includ- 
ing an aggregate of over 86,000 acres for himself. Theoretically grants 
were conditioned upon occupation and improvement, but the land ad- 
ministration was in the hands of the governor and council, or sometimes 
of the councillors alone, who, being themselves large landholders, were 
lax in enforcing rules which operated against the interests of their class." 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



45 



the rich alluvial lands along the coast had become pri- 
vate property. Settlement was therefore pushed back 
upon what is called the Piedmont plateau. This was the 
land above the "fall line" of the rivers, and its soil and 
consequent crops and social organization was so wholly 
different as to have the most important effects upon the 
whole history of this region, and indeed upon the history 
of the whole country. 

This physiographic line received a still sharper em- 
phasis through the fact that it chanced to coincide with 
a racial division. It so happened that when in 1700 the 
line of westward advance of settlement in Virginia had 
just reached this Piedmont plateau, and when the rich 
alluvial tobacco land had all been divided up into pri- 
vately owned plantations, the great exodus from the 
north of Ireland, which has already been described, took 
place. 1 The upland agriculture and the social organiza- 
tion based upon it was from the beginning totally different 
from that of the tidewater region. The back country 
people were raisers of corn and livestock, of a very stunted 
kind to be sure. They were most of all hunters and 
trappers and explorers of the wilderness. From them 
sprung a race of frontiersmen and Indian fighters that 
was to become the social class most characteristic of 
American society. 

The period of the " Commonwealth " in England had 
an important effect in Virginia as well as in New England. 
This effect was, however, very different. While in New 
England the triumph of the Puritan in the mother coun- 
try stopped immigration almost entirely, it gave a strong 
impetus to a certain sort of immigration into Virginia. 

1 John Fiske, "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," Vol. II, pp. 456-461. 



46 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

A number of the Cavaliers, rinding England no longer 
agreeable as a place of residence, came to the New World. 1 
These were men of wealth and power, and they retained 
their power in Virginia. This was the time when the 
families of Randolph, Madison, Mason, Monroe, Marshall, 
Washington, and many others whose names were to be 
famous in American history came to these shores. 

Such a society was bound to develop industrial classes 
that would struggle for mastery. Throughout colonial 
times, and indeed for many years to follow, there was 
always one main line of cleavage. With variations of 
numerous kinds, some of which occasionally obscured the 
basic division, this line continued almost until the present 
generation. This was the conflict between the "back 
country" and the coast district. The causes of this 
conflict of interest were numerous. In the first place, 
the coast population was a trading creditor class to which 
the back country people were indebted. The frontier 
always offered an opportunity of escape from industrial 
servitude, both wage and chattel, and this naturally 
displeased those who profited by such servitude. The 
older sections have always opposed further expansion, 
sometimes openly, but more frequently in an indirect 
and sometimes secret manner. England long endeavored 
to restrict settlement to a narrow strip along the coast. 
The merchants of the coast were often deeply interested 
in the fur trade, and the advance of settlement wiped 
out this trade. There was always complaint on the part 
of the frontiersmen that they were overcharged by the 

1 John Fiske, "Old Virginia and Her Neighbors," Vol. II, pp. 27-28; 
Phillip Alexander Bruce, "Economic History of Virginia in the Seven- 
teenth Century," Vol. I, p. 246, Vol. II, pp. 487-581. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



47 



coast merchants, while the latter retorted with com- 
plaints of the nonpayment of debts. The relations with 
the Indians proved another constant source of friction. 
The "back country" men were always crowding the In- 
dian from his hunting grounds and coming into conflict 
with him. They were therefore continually asking for 
troops and supplies for military expeditions and forti- 
fications. The coast residents, wishing to use the Indian 
for trading purposes, or at least indifferent to his depre- 
dations, opposed appropriations for protection against 
his attacks. 

In 1676 this conflict in Virginia broke into open war 
as "Bacon's Rebellion." There were peculiar local and 
personal conditions in this conflict as in all subsequent 
ones, but the causes assigned for the struggle are prac- 
tically those given above. Governor Berkeley had been 
sent from England and had become the especial repre- 
sentative of the Cavalier class that emigrated at this 
time. His character may be judged from a famous 
extract from his report to the Commissioners of Planta- 
tions in 1670. In response to the question, 

"What course is taken about the instructing of the 
people within your government in the Christian re- 
ligion ? " he replied: — 

"The same course that is taken in England out of 
towns ; every man according to his ability instructing 
his children. We have forty-eight parishes, and our 
ministers are well paid, and by my consent should be 
better, if they would pray oftener and preach less. But of 
all other commodities, so of this, the worst is sent us, and 
we had few that we could boast of, since the persecution 
in Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men hither. 



48 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

But, I thank God, there are no free schools, nor printing, 
and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years ; 
for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and 
sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, 
and libels against the best government. God keep us 
from both !" 

Berkeley was a direct representative of the royal party 
in England. He was parceling out the rich plantation 
lands of Virginia among his favorites even more reck- 
lessly than had been the custom hitherto. He had a 
subservient House of Burgesses, composed of the rich 
planters, and he refused to call a new election. 1 He was 
directly concerned in the fur trade and was reported to 
have made agreements with the very Indians who were 
massacring the settlers on the frontier. Finally in 
1676 Bacon gathered an army in spite of the orders of the 
Governor, defeated the Indians, and then marching to 
Jamestown, compelled the election of a new House of 
Burgesses, and was a successful candidate in that elec- 
tion. When Berkeley continued to plot against his life 
Bacon fled to the frontier to gather another army, which 
he again led first against the Indians who had risen once 
more, and then back again to Jamestown, which was then 
burned to the ground. 

In the midst of these stirring events he was taken sick 
and died, and Berkeley took such bloody vengeance as 
to call forth the historic remark from Charles II: "As 
I live, the old fool has put to death more people in that 
naked country than I did for the murder of my father." 2 

1 Wilson, "History of the American People," Vol. I, pp. 256-275. 

2 A contemporary report by a member of the Virginia Council contains 
some sentences that throw a striking light on the character of Bacon's 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



49 



The story of Virginia was typical of that of Georgia 
and the Carolinas. In each there was the same planta- 
tion system, the same division of interests between coast 
and back country. In the Carolinas the fur trade was 
of even more importance, and it was succeeded by a stage 
which was of little importance in Virginia, but which was 
to appear again and again in other portions of the coun- 
try, — the ranching industry. 1 

The Middle Colonies 

In very many senses of the word the term "Middle" 
applies to the colonies of New York, Pennsylvania, New 
Jersey, and Delaware. In climate and industrial and social 
structure they lay between the South and New England. 
The soil lacked the alluvial richness of Virginia and the 

Rebellion: "Bacon gathers about him a Rabble of the basest sort of 
People, whose Conditions are such as by a change could not admit of 
worse, with these began to stand in Defyance against the government. . . . 
These are the men that are sett up for the good of ye Country ; who for 
ye ease of the Poore will have no taxes paied . . . would have all magis- 
tracie and government taken away & sett up one themselves & to 
make their good Intentions more manifest stick not to talk openly of 
shareing men's Estates among themselves." 

1 "In 1708 it was estimated that over 50,000 skins were shipped from 
Charleston annually. ... In 173 1 the item of deerskins alone amounted 
to 225,000. . . . The fur trade was at its best from 1721 to 1743. After 
that it began to decline. In South Carolina it declined rapidly after the 
removal of the Cherokees from the larger portion of the up-country in 
1755. It had been one of the leading industries of the colony, and even 
as late as 1748 it ranked next to rice in the value of the amount exported. 
The total value of the exports from Nov. 1 , 1 747, to Nov. 1 , 1 748, amounted 
to £1,129,560, of which rice supplied £618,750 worth, and the fur trade 
£252,300. . . . The decline of the fur trade in the decade following 
indicated that the first phase of frontier life had passed. The trader had 
started his operations on the coast, and as the frontier receded he followed 
to make room for the cow-pen keepers." 
E 



5<D SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

barren rockiness of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 
Hence it did not drive its population to the sea in boats 
nor attract them to great plantations, but built up in- 
stead a race of small farmers that was destined for many 
generations to be the dominant factor in American society. 
Its rivers were long enough for navigation, but did not 
partake of the marshy character of the James and the 
Roanoke. They were preeminently fitted for commerce 
rather than for agriculture or manufacturing. 

New York, like several other colonies, was started as 
a trading venture by a commercial corporation, in this 
case by the Dutch West India Company. Holland 
was crowding Spain for first place in the commercial 
world, and was to hold that position for a moment before 
being pushed back by rapidly advancing England. In 
spite of the great wealth that came from the fur trade in 
New York, the Dutch West India Company, like all the 
other proprietary companies that established colonies 
in America, received but small profits. To the time of 
the control by this Company is due the establishment 
of the "patroon" estates. In its efforts to secure a 
permanent agricultural population the Company granted 
great tracts of country reaching back for miles on either 
side of the Hudson, together with certain semi-feudal 
rights to those who brought over a certain number of 
settlers. In few cases did this result in estabhshing 
permanent settlements such as were intended, but it 
did succeed in creating a mass of indefinite legal relations 
that still haunt the New York courts. 1 

Pennsylvania was also a private property in the be- 

1 John Fiske, "Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America," Vol. II, 
PP. 133-140. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



51 



ginning, but was established largely for other reasons 
than personal profit, although the family of William Penn 
sought very hard to derive such a profit from it. 

Both New York and Pennsylvania contained a large 
percentage of settlers from Continental Europe. Penn- 
sylvania was especially the refuge of the Palatinate 
Germans. 1 

None of the Middle colonies endured the periods of 
general hardship that came near destroying New Eng- 
land and Virginia in the cradle. Almost from the be- 
ginning they were fairly prosperous and grew rapidly. 
From the first the agricultural basis of the country was 
distinct from that of New England or the South. It was 
not a supplementary industry wrung from a barren soil 
to assist in supporting an " amphibious population." 
Neither was it the plantation production of a great staple 
for export. It was the small, diversified, self-supporting 
farming that was destined to be for many years the largest 
element in American industrial life. Moreover, just 
because this form of farming is, for the early stages of 
capitalism at least, the most economical, it was not long 
until Philadelphia was the leading port in America, pass- 
ing even Boston in the amount of goods exported. Nor 
was it so many years before Boston was crowded to third 
place with New York at the head. The furs, lumber, 
hides, and other diverse products reached a greater value, 
and became the foundation of a larger and more stable 
commerce than cotton, fish, rum, or slaves. 

Moreover, if New England and the South were drawing 
vast profits from rum and slaves and smuggling, New 
York was not without an even more shady and profitable 

1 See pp. 15-17. 



52 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



commerce, for this city was the headquarters of seven- 
teenth-century piracy. This was the golden age of 
piracy. Spain was still rich in commerce. Her ships 
were bringing valuable cargoes from the New World to 
the Old. But Spain, in spite of, or on account of, the ease 
with which she was obtaining certain forms of wealth 
from America, had lost her place as the foremost com- 
mercial nation. She had now been relegated to a posi- 
tion much inferior to either Holland or England. 

Spain and Holland having lost the power to protect 
their still rich commerce, a race of pirates arose who 
preyed upon the merchant ships of these nations. New 
York was one of the chief harbors for the disposal of 
piratical plunder. 1 The entire colonial government 
became involved in piracy. The pirates were forced to 
share their booty with the royal governors, and this fact 
was cited as one of the grievances of the party which 
opposed these governors. This matter finally climaxed 
with the notorious affair of Captain Kidd, who was sent 
out to hunt the pirates, but found piracy more profitable, 
and was himself finally hung, — not because he was worse 
than the others, but because his career came just at the 
close of the period when piracy was almost a legitimate 
means of livelihood, and when the navies of England and 
Holland had become sufficiently strong to prevent 
piracy. 

By the close of the seventeenth century the same class 
distinctions that had arisen in the other colonies were 
apparent in New York. 

" Long-continued arbitrary taxation and the repeated 
failure to obtain representative government had caused 

1 John Fiske, "Dutch and Quaker Colonies," Vol. II, pp. 222-235. 



THE COLONIAL STAGE 



53 



much popular discontent. Though the population of the 
little city was scarcely more than 4000 souls, a distinc- 
tion of classes was plainly to be seen. Without regard 
to race the small shopkeepers, small farmers, sailors, 
shipwrights, and artisans were far apart in their sym- 
pathies from the rich fur traders, patroons, lawyers, and 
royal officials." 1 

This antagonism broke into armed rebellion under 
Jacob Leisler, in 1689. The royal Governor was over- 
thrown, and Leisler ruled for a time in his place. But 
later came reinforcements from England, and Leisler 
paid the penalty of his rebellion with his life. "Had 
things gone as Leisler hoped and expected," says John 
Fiske, "the name of Leisler would be inseparably asso- 
ciated with the firm establishment of representative 
government and the first triumph of democracy in the 
province of New York." 

The same political lines existed in Pennsylvania, but 
did not find violent expression until 1763, when a body 
of between two and three hundred armed frontiersmen 
moved upon Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin was sent 
to their camp by the Governor, and through him they 
presented a list of their grievances. They complained 
of the unfair method of districting the colony by which 
the back countries were given a much smaller number 
of representatives in the colonial legislature in propor- 
tion to population than the older districts. This was 
a universal method of maintaining the domination of the 
commercial classes during the colonial period. The 
complaint also voiced the old grievance concerning the 
Indians. Indeed, it was to attack some Indians who had 
1 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 184. 



54 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



been given shelter in Philadelphia that they had moved 
upon that city. The paper money controversy was also 
an issue here as it was in nearly every colony. 1 

Having voiced their complaints, the backwoodsmen 
disbanded and went home, so that Pennsylvania was 
spared the bloodshed that had taken place in other col- 
onies. 

When a society begins to develop class antagonisms, 
it is a sign that it has reached a point where independent 
existence is possible. It has begun to have a social life 
and method of growth of its own. If it is a colony, it has 
arrived at a critical stage where only a slight jar will be 
needed to start separatist tendencies. 

We have traced each of the main groups of colonies 
up to the point where this independent evolution was 
in progress. For a period their history has much in 
common, and can therefore be best treated as a whole. 

1 Isaac Sharpless, "Two Centuries of Pennsylvania History," pp. 126, 
142-143, 154-155. There were similar uprisings in other colonies. Those 
of Davis and Pate in Maryland and of the "Regulators " in the Carolinas 
are the most important of those not mentioned in the text. 



CHAPTER V 



GROWTH OF SOLIDARITY 

The close of the seventeenth century saw the center 
of colonial life quite thoroughly transplanted to America. 
None of the principal colonies had any essential portion 
of their industrial life across the Atlantic. They still 
imported much, but they imported it in their own vessels, 
and under the control and for the profit of their own 
merchants, and not^as a part of European commerce. 

The colonies were everywhere drawing closer together. 
This was true in the simple geographical sense. The 
appearance of boundary disputes in a half dozen places 
is significant that populations were now approaching 
each other and that each colony was no longer a small 
settlement surrounded by miles of wilderness. The 
settlement of one of these boundary disputes marked a 
line that was to run with sinister significance through a 
succeeding century of American history. This was the 
line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, which was 
carefully and ceremoniously surveyed and marked by 
two English surveyors in 1767, from whom it took the 
name of "Mason and Dixon's Line." 

Household industry had developed to the point where 
each colony was well-nigh self-supporting, so far as the 
principal necessities of life were concerned. A laboring 
class, divorced from land and capital, had appeared in 
each of the colonies. In the South this was composed 

55 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



largely of negro chattel slaves. These had been brought 
over by the thousands by the traders of New and old 
England. Nearly all the colonies at some time or an- 
other opposed the importation of slaves, but their im- 
portation was a profitable business for the mother coun- 
try, and she would not listen to any restrictive proposals. 
Indeed, by the agreement called the "Asiento," signed at 
the treaty of Utrecht in 1 7 13, the slave trade was con- 
fined to a monopoly controlled by Queen Anne and her 
royal successors and court favorites. After that, all 
the power of the British government was used to push 
this traffic. 

In the Middle colonies the laboring population was 
composed largely of " indentured servants" and others 
who were in a more or less open form of slavery. In New 
England these forms were also found, and here there were 
also considerable numbers of wageworkers. 

The principal highway of commerce was along the 
coast, and with increasing population and diversity of 
productions the coast cities were much more closely con- 
nected with each other than with the "back country " 
of their own colony. 

Population increased with great rapidity during the 
first half of the eighteenth century. In 1700 there were 
about 250,000 people in the thirteen colonies. By 1750 
the population had increased to 1 ,3 7o,ooo. 1 This increase 
of population was forcing settlement back from the sea- 
coast, and it was even beginning to flow down into the 
Ohio valley. These " back-country" settlements were 
coming into close proximity, and were finding many 
common interests. 

1 R. G. Thwaites, "The Colonies," pp. 265-266. 



GROWTH OF SOLIDARITY 



57 



The establishment of a crude postal system in 1693 
did much to unify colonial life. This system began 
under private control, but was placed under royal man- 
agement in 1707. In 1737, Benjamin Franklin was 
made colonial postmaster-general, and continued in that 
position until the outbreak of the Revolution. During 
this time the system was extended to Canada and regular 
mail routes established between the principal cities. 

Every Indian outbreak drove the colonies closer to- 
gether. Of even greater importance as a unifying force 
was the series of wars between England and various 
nations of continental Europe. The colonies were 
always involved in these wars, since both France and 
Spain, who were arrayed against England, had colonies 
on the American continent. In the War of the Austrian 
Succession, the New England colonists fitted out an 
expedition that captured Louisburg, in French Canada. 
This was supposed to be an impregnable fortress, and 
the fact that it fell before colonial troops gave a feeling 
of self-confidence that was to develop into one of inde- 
pendence. 

The final grapple between France and England for 
the mastery of the commercial world came in what was 
known in America as the " French and Indian War," 
ending in 1763. In America this war was waged for the 
possession of the Mississippi Valley. The pressure of an 
increasing population, that had crowded the colonies 
together until they were quarreling over boundary lines, 
had become so great that it was at last breaking over the 
mighty barrier of the Alleghenies. But here it was 
meeting with conflicting claims of sovereignty. France 
had been sending her explorers all up and down the tribu- 



58 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



taries of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, and she 
claimed, by virtue of their discoveries and subsequent 
occupation by an army of fur traders, all this great inland 
empire. 

Coming from the Atlantic side, the key to this territory 
lies at the point where the Allegheny and Monongahela 
rivers meet to form the Ohio, and where the city of Pitts- 
burg now stands. 1 

Virginia and Pennsylvania land speculators were 
already plotting this country, and when France suddenly 
seized the gateway to the Ohio and erected a fort on the 
present site of Pittsburg, England promptly protested. As 
her messenger to bear this protest she chose a young sur- 
veyor, who had been using his position to the advan- 
tage of the land companies with which he was just be- 
ginning to be connected, and in which his brother was 
a prominent figure. The name of this surveyor was 
George Washington. His efforts to persuade the French 
to leave were in vain; and when war broke out and Brit- 
ish soldiers were sent to America he was chosen to co- 
operate with the regulars under General Braddock in 
an attack upon Fort Duquesne. 

The result of that attack was to add greatly to colonial 
self-confidence. Braddock refused to accept the advice 
of the trained Indian fighters who accompanied him, 
and moved on through the wilderness with all the pomp 
and ceremony of an English parade ground. Naturally 
he was ambushed, and when he tried to meet the craftiest 
wilderness fighters the world has ever known with the 
tactics of the European martinet, his forces were well- 
nigh annihilated. The man who reaped what honors were 

1 Frederick A. Ogg, "The Opening of the Mississippi," p. 251. 



GROWTH OF SOLIDARITY 



59 



gained that day was Washington, who, with the trained 
frontier fighters, covered the retreat of the British regu- 
lars and prevented a wholesale massacre. It did not 
take long for the story of how untrained frontiersmen 
outfought British regulars to spread throughout the 
colonies. The result was to take away the halo of invin- 
cibility that had surrounded these troops and to replace 
it with something like contempt. 

The growth of economic unity and the appearance of 
military necessity caused many plans to be set forth 
for the political unity of the colonies. Some of these, 
as the New England Confederation of 1643 to 1660, 
were quite fully organized. Others, as Leisler's plan of 
union in 1690, and William Penn's in 1697, never reached 
farther than the theoretical stage. There were several 
attempts at union on the part of royal governors. The 
main unifying effect of these officials, however, was in- 
direct and unintended. The common hostility to them 
on the part of the various colonies tended to create a 
bond of sympathy that was to prove of value as a basis 
of a hostile movement against England at the time of 
the Revolution. 



CHAPTER VI 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

By the middle of the eighteenth century American 
society had its own industrial basis. It had also devel- 
oped its own political structure to correspond to this 
industrial base. In the course of this development the 
interests of the ruling classes of America and England 
had grown antagonistic. 

The industrial revolution was in full swing in England. 
The steam engine, the power loom, the spinning jenny, 
and other great basic revolutionary inventions were just 
taking form. The French and Indian War had laid the 
foundation of British imperial capitalism. It had given 
England dominion over India as well as Canada, and had 
raised Prussia to the dominant position which made pos- 
sible modern Germany. 

This war had been conducted that English markets 
might be extended, that gold might flow to the mother 
country, in short, that the just arising capitalist class 
might prosper. The economic theory accepted by those 
who controlled British industry and government was 
what has been called the " Mercantile System." Ac- 
cording to this theory one of the great objects of govern- 
ment was to pass laws that would insure a favorable 
"balance of trade." For this purpose legislation was 
shaped with a view of making the mother country the 
manufacturing center to which all other countries sent 

60 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 6l 

raw materials, and from which they were forced to buy 
manufactured articles. Colonies, in particular, were 
expected to buy all the things they needed of the mother 
country. This theory, backed by the interests of the 
ruling class of England, is the explanation of the Naviga- 
tion Laws, which are commonly given as one of the prin- 
cipal causes of the Revolution. 

The recent war had left England with a crushing debt. 
This was an added reason for seeking to raise revenue in 
America and for confining American trade to British ports. 

Each of the colonies had some especial interest that 
came into sharp conflict with the actions of the British 
government. New England, the head and front of the 
Revolution, had many very serious grievances, although 
some of them would hardly be looked upon as purely 
patriotic by those who fix opinions in present society. 
We have already seen how completely New England was 
dominated by commercial and fishing interests. Her 
" great men" were all merchants. But their trade was 
not conducted in a manner that is commonly supposed to 
carry social preeminence. David H. Wells, in his article 
on " American Merchant Marine" in Lalor's " Encyclo- 
pedia of Political and Social Science," describes these 
merchants and their trade as follows : — 

"Nine-tenths of their merchants were smugglers. 
One quarter of all the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence were bred to commerce, the command of ships, 
and the contraband trade. Hancock, Trumbull (Brother 
Jonathan) , and Hamilton were all known to be cognizant 
of contraband transactions, and approved of them. Han- 
cock was the prince of contraband traders, and, with 
John Adams as his counsel, was appointed for trial before 



62 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the admiralty court of Boston, at the exact hour of the 
shedding of blood at Lexington, in a suit for $500,000 
penalties alleged to have been incurred by him as a 
smuggler." 

Like all smugglers, Hancock cared little for the forms 
of law, and trusted to bribery and violence to secure his 
ends. When his sloop, Liberty, was endeavoring to run 
the customs, he first tried to bribe the officials, and, this 
failing, locked up the guard in a cabin and unloaded the 
sloop under the protection of a gang of thugs secured for 
the occasion. 1 

For many years this smuggling had been winked at 
by British officials. The smugglers were not averse to 
dividing their profits to a limited extent with complaisant 
officials, and England was a long way off in the days of 
sailing vessels. Even in England there had been a 
laxity in the enforcement of smuggling laws, which now 
suddenly ceased. In England enforcement of the laws 
caused little more than a suppressed grumbling. In 
America it led to rioting and then to revolution. 

In America the suppression of smuggling meant the 
suppression of the commercial life of New England. We 
have already seen that one of the principal items of com- 
merce was the famous three-cornered rum-molasses- 
slaves trade. One of the first of the new taxes was a 
prohibitive tariff on the molasses from which the rum 
was made. 

Those citizens of New England who were not concerned 
with commerce were generally interested in fishing, and 
here again the new legislation struck fatal blows. The 

1 Charles Stedman, "The History of the Origin, Progress, and Ter- 
mination of the American War," London, 1794, Vol. I, p. 63. 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



63 



trade with southern Europe was forbidden, and for a 
time the New England fishers were not permitted to use 
the Newfoundland Banks. 

Another important and profitable article of smuggled 
commerce was tea. This was brought from Holland. 
Here the interests of the English governing classes came 
into direct and sharp conflict with the American smug- 
glers. The East India Company had a monopoly of the 
tea trade. This company was owned by court favorites. 
It was threatened with bankruptcy. It had 17,000,000 
pounds of tea stored in English warehouses. On this it 
was required to pay a shilling a pound before it could 
sell it in England. The English government proposed a 
scheme by which this tea could be sold in America for 
less than it would cost the Englishmen who paid the local 
tax. 

The orthodox schoolbook histories assure us that this 
offer of cheap tea to Americans was an attempt to " bribe 
a nation," and that the Americans indignantly rejected 
the bribe and threw the tea into Boston Harbor in de- 
fense of a principle. This high-minded rejection of a 
bribe by John Hancock, the man who was mainly re- 
sponsible for the famous Boston Tea Party, is scarcely 
in accord with what we have learned of his character. 
The fact is that had the tax not been reduced there would 
have been little objection. It was the reduction itself 
and not the principle which raised the famous riot. So 
long as the East India Company was compelled to pay 
the English tax, the American smugglers could undersell 
it and were not worried about questions of taxation, or 
patriotism. But when the tax was rebated the East 
India Company could undersell the smugglers. This 



64 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



destroyed the profit in smuggling, something infinitely 
more effective in checking that crime than a whole fleet 
of gunboats. No wonder that Hancock, whose popular 
title was the " prince of smugglers," called a mass meeting 
and with the aid of Samuel Adams organized that glorious 
mob that dumped the tea in Boston Harbor and started 
the Revolution, — at least, so the textbooks tell us. 

In the Middle colonies there was another specific 
grievance in addition to the fact that their trade with the 
West Indies, upon which they depended for specie, was 
interfered with when smuggling was restricted. New 
York and Pennsylvania had at least the beginnings of a 
manufacturing industry. Bishop, in his " History of 
American Manufactures," assures us that, "Even at the 
present day, many countries which were reckoned elders 
in the family of nations ere the ring of the ax was heard 
in the forests of America, are essentially less independent 
in regard to some products of manufacture than were 
the American colonies at the time of the Revolution." 

According to the theory of the mercantile system, 
these budding manufactures were injurious to the mother 
country, except as the product was used by the makers, 
and laws forbidding them were passed by the British 
Parliament. There is little evidence that the laws 
against manufacturing were ever enforced, but the fact 
that the long disused smuggling acts were now being 
revived showed the possibility of similar action in regard 
to other laws. 

There was another grievance which the Middle colonies 
shared with the South and which was much more im- 
portant. In these two sections population was already 
pressing toward the West. There had been a rapid in- 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



65 



crease in the number of slaves in the South and of workers 
in the Middle colonies. As a result, western lands were 
becoming valuable, and men prominent in colonial life 
were already deeply involved in western land schemes. 

Here again English officials came into direct conflict 
with the interests of the dominant class in the colonies. 
Great fur trading companies had been organized by 
English merchants, and these companies naturally op- 
posed western settlement. Furthermore, it was well 
recognized that the closer the colonies were kept to the 
seaboard, the easier they could be controlled. 

The French and Indian War had been precipitated 
largely by these land speculators. 1 They embraced the 
most prominent men in the colonies. Washington was 
especially active along this line. He had used his posi- 
tion as royal surveyor to locate lands within the limits 
which he was supposed to preserve from settlement. He 
had helped to maintain what would now be called a 
"land lobby" in London to push his schemes. When 
Parliament, by the Quebec Act, extended the jurisdiction 
of Canada over the western country, his interests were 
directly threatened, and had the Revolution not oc- 
curred, he would have lost some 30,000 acres of land. It 
would be foolish to say that Washington became a revo- 
lutionist because of his western land interests. On the 
other hand, it has been worse than foolish to depict him 

1 Herbert B. Adams, "Maryland's Influence upon Land Cessions," in 
Johns Hopkins 1 University Studies in History and Political Science, Vol. 
Ill; Winsor, "Westward Movement," pp. 34-61 ; Sumner, "The Finan- 
cier and Finances of the Revolution," Vol. II, Chap. XXXIII; "Old 
South Leaflets," Nos. 16, 27, 163 ; Hunt, "Life of Madison," pp. 46-50; 
T. Watson, "Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson," pp. 150-153 ; Schouler, 
"History of United States," Vol. I, pp. 216-218. 

F 



66 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

as a whole-souled superman unmoved by human con- 
siderations. 

There was another cause which was more widespread 
than any of these, and which undoubtedly did more to 
make the Revolution a popular movement than any one 
of those previously mentioned. This was the paper 
money question. With regard to England all the col- 
onies were debtors, and throughout history the debtor 
class has sought to depreciate the currency. 

All the colonies had issued paper money in large quan- 
tities. In all save Pennsylvania it had greatly depre- 
ciated in value. In some colonies it had become prac- 
tically valueless, and there had been successive issues, or 
" tenors," as they were called, each of which had been 
used to redeem the previous one, and all of which were 
almost equally worthless. The English merchants who 
did business in the colonies were compelled to accept this 
paper money in payment for the goods they sold, as all 
of the colonies had enacted most stringent laws enforcing 
the legal tender character of the bills. 

This antagonism reached a climax at the close of the 
French and Indian War. The British merchants had 
sent over large quantities of goods during this war, and 
were now pressing for settlement in something besides 
the depreciated paper money. The British Parliament 
backed them up in this demand, and enacted a law for- 
bidding further paper money issues in the New England 
colonies, and restricting them or providing for early 
prohibition in the others. 

This action served to bring an entirely new set of sup- 
porters to the cause of the Revolution. Paper money 
had already been a cause for continuous quarrels within 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



6 7 



the colonies. The wealthy creditor class had opposed 
the paper money, and the country debtor class had favored 
it. Elections for the colonial legislatures had turned 
upon this issue, and the country districts with their debtor 
population had been almost universally victorious. This 
had also been true of the Southern colonies, which were 
little affected by the Navigation Acts and the laws re- 
stricting manufacture. 1 Now all the fierce partisanship 
that had often broken out in riots against the "pluto- 
crats" of the coast cities was skillfully turned against 
the British government. The orthodox histories say 
very little about this point, although contemporary 
writers, and especially English ones, place it almost in 
the front rank of causes of the Revolution. Those who 
have written our histories have been controlled largely 
by creditor class sympathies, and they are not particularly 
proud of the fact that one of the prime causes of the 
Revolution was the desire of a large number of the colo- 
nists to escape paying their debts. 

It was especially easy to manipulate the paper money 
sentiment into revolutionary action. In nearly every 
colony the legislative council, chosen by a more or less 
popular vote, was controlled by the debtor class and was 
in a perpetual fight with the royal governor. This fight 
usually took on a form that is strongly suggestive of a 
comic opera plot. Each year the legislature would pre- 
pare certain laws providing for paper money, western 
extension, protection against the Indians, or some other 
line of action to which there was royal objection. Then 

1 This is treated in full in the thesis, "History of Economic Thought in 
Relation to Economic Conditions," by May Wood Simons, to which the 
Harris Prize was awarded by Northwestern University. 



68 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



the governor would veto the laws. The legislature would 
then refuse to vote the governor's salary. He would 
haggle with them until his funds gave out or their desire 
for legislation was satisfied. Then he would sign the 
laws agreed upon and would receive his salary. Over 
and over again in almost every colony this process was 
repeated. The British government constantly sought 
to find some method by which the governor's salary would 
be assured without this bargain and sale process. The 
colonists steadfastly opposed all proposals to pay him 
from any income save the colonial treasury controlled by 
the legislature. 

This perennial haggling had naturally divided the 
colonists into two parties, one of which clung to the gov- 
ernor, while the other followed the legislative body. As 
the governor was the representative of the king, it was 
easy to turn the adherents of the legislative body into 
revolutionists. 

These legislatures constituted the germs of an inde- 
pendent government. For the colonists they were the 
government which represented colonial interests. When 
the industrial life of the colonies had reached the point 
where its ruling class needed a government to further its 
interests, that government was ready to its hand in the 
colonial legislatures. 

The Stamp Act, which provided for the collection of 
money by a stamp to be placed upon all business papers, 
was hated, not so much because it was " taxation without 
representation," as because it provided that the funds 
obtained through its operation should be used for the 
payment of the salaries of the royal governors. If this 
were done, there would be an end to the bargain and sale 



CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 



69 



method of securing the governor's signature. This meant 
that paper money could no longer be issued, and that 
"stay laws," which prevented the collection of debts, 
could no longer be enacted. 

Parliament not only forbade the issue of paper money, 
but aggravated the situation by passing the Navigation 
Laws at the same time. These closed the West India 
trade, the principal source of colonial specie. 

At every point the industrial life of the colonies had 
reached the stage where it was hampered and restricted 
by its connection with England. Large classes of the 
population required an independent government to 
further their interests. Evolution along the lines already 
drawn could proceed only with independence. Those 
who stood for independence were the most energetic and 
far-sighted among the colonists. In these great basic 
facts and fundamental conflicts of interest do we find the 
causes of the Revolution, and not in petty quarrels over 
insignificant taxes and abstract principles of politics. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE REVOLUTION 

The Revolution succeeded because it was the American 
phase of an English civil war. It was not so much a 
conflict between the colonies and the English govern- 
ment, as it was one aspect of a war between different 
divisions of the English people on both sides the Atlantic. 1 
Indeed, it was, in reality, but one battle of a great world- 
wide struggle between contending social classes. It was 
a part of the violent upheaval of society by which the 
capitalist class overthrew feudalism and came into power. 

In England there had been a reaction after the over- 
throw of the Commonwealth and the restoration of 
Charles II. Feudalism, kingly prerogative, and privi- 
lege had gained a new lease of life. The Georges were 
seeking to push this reaction still further. In this they 
were supported by the landed nobility and its followers, 
who constituted the Tory party. Against this party 
the Whigs, as the representatives of a still new and un- 

1 Justin Winsor, " Narrative and Critical History of America," Vol. 
VI, article on "The Revolution Impending," by Mellen Chamberlain, 
p. i : "The American Revolution was not a quarrel between two 
peoples, ... it was a strife between two parties, the conservatives in 
both countries in one party, and the liberals in both countries as the other 
party ; and some of its fiercest battles were fought in the British Parlia- 
ment." Page 2 : "The American Revolution, in its earlier stages at least, 
was not a contest between opposing governments or nationalities, but 
between two different political and economic systems." 

70 



THE REVOLUTION 



71 



developed capitalism, were struggling. Many of the 
supporters of the old merchant class remained with the 
Tories, so that the Whigs were coming more and more to 
be dominated by and to express the interests of the manu- 
facturers. 

As we have already seen, the dominant interests in 
the revolutionary party in America were those from 
which sprung the present capitalist class, — smuggling 
merchants, manufacturers, land speculators, etc. But 
these had already learned how to draw to themselves 
and use in their interest the great mass of the laboring 
and small business classes. They did this through the 
paper money issue and the appeal to the defenders of 
the popular local legislative assemblies. We shall see later 
how these issues were discarded or repudiated when 
they had served their purpose. It would be foolish to 
attempt to draw the class lines too clearly at this time. 
In only a few localities was the factory stage present. 
All industrial stages from frontier savagery to this be- 
ginning of the factory system existed. Class interests 
could not but be confused in such a society, and their 
political expression would necessarily confound that 
confusion. 

On the whole, however, it may be roughly stated that 
in England the Whigs stood for capitalism, constitutional 
government, freedom of trade, and the powers of Par- 
liament, while the Tories represented feudal landed 
privileges, kingly prerogative, and increase of the royal 
power. 

In America there was no landed nobility with interests 
of its own to defend, and no king to exercise a royal 
power. Nevertheless, the Tories on American soil were 



72 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



at all times, up to the very close of the Revolution, fully 
as numerous as the revolutionists, and their partisans 
always insisted that they were in a great majority. We 
hear much of the " hireling Hessians" whom the British 
brought to America; but which of our textbooks tell us 
that there were 25,000 Americans enlisted in the British 
army, or that at many times there were more Americans 
under the British than the colonial flag? 

As a general thing, the Tories in America came from 
some of the following classes : (1) the personal, political, 
and business followers, dependents, and friends of the 
royal governors; (2) the nonsmuggling merchants of 
New York and the Middle colonies, whose interests were 
bound up in the British trade, and who suffered from the 
competition of the smugglers ; (3) the large landholders 
of the same states ; (4) the clergy who were attached to 
the Church of England, and such of their followers as 
they could influence. In addition to all these more or 
less active classes there was that great mass of the popu- 
lation that, having no direct interests at stake in a change, 
remains indifferent, or clings to things as they are. 1 

Each of these two classes extended its ties across the 
Atlantic, and some of the most effective blows for Amer- 
ican independence were struck by those who fought on 
English soil. 

When we come to consider the actual fighting of the 
Revolution, we meet with many facts that seem to be of 
considerable importance, but that are usually omitted 

1 Justin Winsor, "Narrative and Critical History of America," Vol. 
VII ; article on "The Loyalists and their Fortune," by George E. Ellis; 
M. C. Tyler, "The Royalists in the American Revolution," in the Amer- 
ican Historical Review, Vol. I; A. C. Flick, "Loyalism in New York," 
Columbia University Series, Vol. XIV, No. 1. 



THE REVOLUTION 



73 



from our histories. Perhaps this is explained by the 
statement of S. G. Fisher in his "True History of the 
American Revolution." 

"The people who write histories are usually of the class 
who take the side of the government in a revolution; 
and as Americans, they are anxious to believe that our 
Revolution was different from others, more decorous, and 
altogether free from the atrocities, mistakes, and ab- 
surdities which characterize even the patriot party in a 
revolution. . . . They have accordingly tried to de- 
scribe a revolution in which all scholarly, refined, and 
conservative persons might have unhesitatingly taken 
part; but such revolutions have never been known to 
happen." 

The truth is that the Revolution was to a large extent 
started and maintained through methods of mob violence 
and terrorism, such as civilized war hardly tolerates to- 
day. One of the first hostile acts, while the colonists were 
still loudly protesting their loyalty, was the burning of 
the revenue frigate Gaspe, that had very foolishly and 
tyrannically dared to interfere with the regular business 
of the New England smugglers. The first active steps 
toward organized revolution consisted in the formation 
of "Committees of Correspondence," a sort of semi- 
secret network of conspirators extending throughout the 
colonies. This body had its headquarters in Boston, 
with Samuel Adams, one of those natural organizers and 
agitators, skilled in all the arts of arousing the masses 
that have ever been characteristic of popular leaders. 1 This 

1 J. K. Hosmer, "Sam Adams, The Man of the Town-Meeting," in 
Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, 1884, 
p. 34 : "He had no private business after the first years of his manhood, 



74 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



chain of committees early took up the work of terrorizing 
those who opposed them. The story of the methods 
used to accomplish this end does not make nice reading. 
It tells of the whipping of unarmed men by armed mobs, 
of the wholesale application of that humorous method 
of torturing which is peculiarly American, and is supposed 
to have originated at this time, tarring and feathering, 
and riding on a rail. It describes the burning of houses, 
the " confiscation " of property, the hanging of not a few, 
and the application of nearly all the methods of mob 
violence that ingenuity could devise. 

One of the weapons which was most widely used, both 
locally and nationally, privately and officially, was the 
boycott. One of the first acts of the first session of the 
Continental Congress was to declare a boycott on all 
English goods. This was two years before the Declara- 
tion of Independence, while the colonies were still making 
a great parade of their loyalty. Yet this resolution pro- 
vided not simply for what has come to be known as a 
"primary" boycott against English goods. It went on 
to describe most elaborately the methods to be used to 
enforce a boycott upon any merchants who should handle 
British goods, or who should trade with England in any 
way. 1 The Committees of Correspondence then saw to it 
that this boycott was enforced, and they worked to such 

was the public servant, simply and solely, in places large and small, — 
fire-ward, committee to see that chimneys were safe, tax-collector, mod- 
erator of town-meeting, representative, congressman, governor. One 
may almost call him the creature of the town-meeting. His development 
took place on the floor of Faneuil Hall and Old South, from the time when 
he stood there as a master figure ; and such a master of the methods by 
which a town-meeting may be swayed the world has never seen," etc. 
1 Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. I, pp. 23-26. 



THE REVOLUTION 



75 



good effect that importations from England fell off one 
half almost at once. 

When the statement is made that only a minority of 
the population were revolutionists, the question naturally 
arises as to how this minority was able to win out. The 
answer is found in the fact noted by every writer who has 
studied this period that the revolutionists were much 
more active, efficient, cohesive, and belligerent, more 
conscious of their aims and more determined in their 
pursuit than any other portion of society. 1 This is an 
invariable characteristic of a rising social class. The 
capitalist class was then the coming class. It was the 
class to whom the future belonged. It was the class 
whose victory was essential to progress. The Tories, 
with their adherence to the royal governors and to the 
old system of social castes and legal privileges, were 
harking back to an already dead society. They had 
neither ideas nor ideals to inspire them. The economic 
system to which they belonged was already crumbling 
into the dust of history. 

In so far as the military operations on American soil 
are concerned, they can best be understood if we recall 
the geographical features of the Atlantic coast. Through- 
out history the strategic line of attack and defense on 
that coast, from either a commercial or a military point 
of view, has been the valley of the Hudson. If the Brit- 
ish could occupy this valley, rebellious New England 
would be cut off from the other colonies, and a base of 
supplies and operations created from which other mili- 

1 The revolutionists were also the armed and trained riflemen of 
society. It was the frontiersmen who captured Burgoyne, won the battle 
of King's Mountain, and generally furnished the fighters at critical times. 



7 6 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



tary movements of conquest would have been compara- 
tively easy. Boston, the center of revolt, and Phila- 
delphia, the largest city, could have been occupied almost 
at will, and a brief raiding expedition would have sufficed 
to have subdued the Southern colonies. 

At the opening of hostilities Boston was already oc- 
cupied by a British army under General Gage. He per- 
mitted a portion of his force to be drawn away to Lexing- 
ton in the effort to destroy the military stores that the 
colonists had accumulated, and saw a large portion of this 
detachment wiped out by a guerrilla attack. Then 
came the occupation of Bunker (or Breed's) Hill, which 
commanded Boston. The British army attacked the 
American intrenchments, and was successful, but at a 
terrible cost. However, the British still occupied Boston, 
and the American army was little more than a disor- 
ganized mob, totally incapable of conducting any effec- 
tive siege. 

At this moment a most important change took place 
in the command of the British troops. General Sir 
William Howe was given charge. The important fact 
about General Howe was that he was a most intensely 
partisan Whig, and that he had been one of the strongest 
defenders of the colonies in the British Parliament. He 
was absolutely opposed to any use of force against them ; 
believed them to be in the right and entitled to victory. 
In other words, the work of conquering the colonists was 
turned over to a man who was anxious that they should 
not be conquered. 

This was the situation when George Washington was 
made commander in chief of the American forces. He 
at once prepared to conduct as much of a siege of Boston 



THE REVOLUTION 



77 



as was possible. He had an army without guns, am- 
munition (Bunker Hill was lost because the American 
ammunition was exhausted), cannon, or even food and 
clothing. Some small cannon that had been captured by 
Ethan Allen at Fort Ticonderoga were hauled by the 
New England farmers on sleds, and at last preparations 
were made for actual hostilities. 

Howe's conduct, in the meantime, had been most 
mysterious if we consider it as that of a sincere British 
general. He was a man of military ability. He was 
located in a city that had once been rendered untenable 
by the occupation of a hill that commanded it. It is a 
first principle of military tactics that all elevations com- 
manding a position must be occupied if the position is to 
be defended. Yet Howe lay in Boston all winter without 
occupying Dorchester Heights, which commanded the 
city, and was apparently very much surprised when 
Washington at last took the hint and threw up some 
intrenchments on that position. Howe then discovered 
the very obvious fact that his position in Boston was 
endangered. He had plenty of ships in the harbor; and 
the artillery of that day in the hands of such artillery- 
men as were to be found among the Continentals was 
not particularly dangerous to a retreating army. More- 
over, there had scarcely been a time during the previous 
winter when he could not have completely routed the 
American forces, as these were practically without am- 
munition. 

Then, at a time when the Revolution was languishing 
for lack of the munitions of war, when New York was 
unguarded at the mouth of the Hudson, Howe sailed 
away to Halifax, leaving behind him over two hundred 



78 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

cannon, several tons of powder, and a great stock of 
other military stores. It is hard to conceive of any- 
greater service he could have extended to the revolution- 
ary cause, unless he had marched his troops directly 
into Washington's camp and turned them over to the 
American general, and there were some serious obstacles 
in the way of doing this. Is it any wonder that this 
auspicious moment was seized to issue the Declaration 
of Independence ? 

A few days before that declaration, however, General 
Howe came back to New York, which he occupied with- 
out resistance, showing that his trip to Halifax was 
unnecessary. He was accompanied by his brother, 
Admiral Howe, who was equally partisan to the Ameri- 
can cause. Here General Howe sent back requests for 
reinforcements, which were promptly sent him, until 
he had between 35,000 and 40,000 well armed, fed, and 
disciplined troops with which to fight between 5000 and 
15,000 ragged, ill-fed, and poorly equipped soldiers under 
Washington. So small were the resources of the Ameri- 
cans that it is doubtful if their military supplies would 
have permitted six weeks of active fighting before they 
would have been completely exhausted and scattered. 
But Howe conducted no active campaign. On the 
contrary, he was careful never to follow up any advan- 
tage which he gained. He would defeat the army under 
Washington, but always gave ample time for recupera- 
tion. At the same time it must be recognized that 
Washington showed himself a brilliant general, fully 
capable of utilizing all the opportunities that Howe so 
kindly gave him. 

The next year, 1777, brought the turning point of the 



THE REVOLUTION 



79 



war. The British occupied New York with many more 
men under Howe than were really needed to hold the 
position. If now the Hudson Valley could be occupied 
throughout its length, the backbone of the colonies would 
be broken. Accordingly Burgoyne was sent down from 
Canada, by way of Lake Champlain, to occupy that valley. 
General Howe was to detach some of his superfluous 
troops and send them up the Hudson to meet Burgoyne. 
Howe did not do this. He did not even conduct an ener- 
getic campaign against that portion of the American 
army which was near him. On the contrary, he was so 
mild in his efforts that the Americans, with a much 
smaller force than Howe, were permitted by him to divide 
their forces and to send a portion under Gage to assist in 
the attack upon Burgoyne. Under these circumstances 
the latter soon found himself much outnumbered, in a 
hostile country, without supplies and no prospect of 
relief, and was compelled to surrender. 

By this time the British government had become 
thoroughly aroused to the attitude of Howe. Criti- 
cisms of him became so sharp that he resigned and went 
back to England, where he was the subject of a Parlia- 
mentary inquiry that developed the facts as set forth. 
He was too powerful politically to be punished, but 
throughout the Revolution the favorite toast at banquets 
of American officers was " General Howe"; but, strange 
as it may seem, no school history considers these facts 
worthy of mention. 

With the fall of Burgoyne and the return of Howe to 
England the war took on a different aspect. It was more 
rigorously prosecuted in America, so much so that at 
times it appeared as if the Revolution would fail and 



80 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

become only a rebellion. Its scope, however, had wi- 
dened. The old commercial rivals of England had joined 
hands with the colonies. France, Spain, and Holland 
extended aid in the form of money, munitions of war, and 
even troops and battleships. England, beset upon all 
sides, was unable to send the troops that were needed, 
and that had been so plentiful when Howe was playing 
at war. Cornwallis was hemmed in at Yorktown by 
the allied French and Continental troops, was compelled 
to surrender, and independence was assured. 



CHAPTER VIII 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 

The surrender of Cornwallis in America was followed 
by a Whig victory in Parliament. On the 27th of Feb- 
ruary, 1782, this resolution was carried in the House of 
Commons : — 

"That it is the opinion of this House that a further 
prosecution of offensive war against America would, 
under present circumstances, be the means of weakening 
the efforts of this country against her European enemies, 
and tend to increase the mutual enmity so fatal to the 
interests both of Great Britain and America." 

One month later the Tory ministry fell, and the Eng- 
lish allies of the American army came into power in the 
home country. In some ways the English Whigs were 
more consistent and more revolutionary than those who 
had fought under the Continental flag. They curbed 
the power of the king and the House of Lords, made the 
House of Commons supreme, and laid the foundations 
for a much more truly democratic government than this 
country has yet enjoyed. One reason for this is to be 
found in the existence in England of a powerful landed 
interest which was in such sharp antagonism to the rising 
industrial capitalists that the latter felt keenly the need 
of continuous curbing of their opponents. 

No such condition existed in America. Here the 
antagonism of classes was rather between the industrial 
G 81 



82 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and mercantile creditors on the coast and the farmer 
debtors of the interior. These latter were apt to make 
an alliance with the wageworkers of the larger cities, 
although these were too little developed to play an 
important part. Consequently the richer class in the 
colonies did not feel the need of any democratic measures 
in order to secure allies from the poorer classes in a fight 
against a crown and landed nobility, as was the case in 
England. 

We see the effect of this condition in the character of 
the state governments formed during the Revolution. 
Practically all of these were supposed to be modeled 
after the British government. But there was an im- 
portant difference. Since the colonists had left England 
the crown and the House of Lords had ceased to hold 
a dominant position in the English government, and their 
importance was decreased still further by the parlia- 
mentary conflict which was being waged simultaneously 
with the Revolutionary War in America. 

In the state governments which were formed during 
the war to take the place of the old colonial establish- 
ments, the second chamber, corresponding to the House 
of Lords, was given equal power with the lower House. 
Moreover, this upper House, instead of being represen- 
tative of a particular form of property relation, and that 
a declining one, was made representative of property 
alone, through very high property requirements for 
membership and suffrage. Property qualifications for 
voting were characteristic of all the state constitutions 
adopted during the Revolution, with the single exception 
of Pennsylvania. This would seem to show that all the 
fine talk about the rights of men and " taxation without 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 83 



representation" and "all men are created equal" was 
intended only to secure popular support with which to 
pull some very hot chestnuts out of the fire for the ruling 
class of the colonies. 

The nature of these state governments gives an idea 
of the political forms desired by ruling class interests at 
the time of the Revolution. The national government 
was too filmy a thing to tell any story clearly. And 
yet it is possible that this very indefiniteness tells an 
equally clear story, for it corresponded very closely to 
the lack of a general industrial life. There were very 
few interests common to all the colonies, and these few 
were not of a kind to overcome the immediate separatist 
ones. 

At the outbreak of the war there was, of course, no 
central government. For the revolutionary forces its 
place was taken by the conspiratory " Committees of 
Correspondence." From these sprang the " Continental 
Congress," which took to itself more and more power as 
the Revolution continued. 1 

It was this body that controlled the movements of the 
army, gave Washington his commission, declared in- 
dependence, made alliances with France, Spain, and 
Holland, borrowed money and pledged the credit of the 
combined colonies for its repayment, issued an incon- 
vertible currency, granted letters of marque and reprisal, 
built a navy, and carried on peace negotiations when the 
war was ended. Yet this body had no legal existence, 
no definite powers, none of the things which are supposed 
to be the essential foundation of a legislative body until 
the war was over, its important work completed, and its 

1 John Fiske, "The Critical Period of American History," pp. 92-93. 



84 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

life about to end. The Articles of Confederation, which 
for the first time provided these things, were not adopted 
by the various states until 1781, and by that time the 
Continental Congress, to which those articles for the first 
time gave a legal sanction, had ceased to play any im- 
portant function. 

Just as the Confederation was born, however, it was 
saved from the calamity of complete insignificance by 
being made a property holder. One of the obstacles to 
all efforts looking toward even so loose a union as that 
of the Confederation had been the possession by several 
of the states of great tracts of western land. This land 
was claimed under old royal grants, all of which were 
drawn before anything was known about the internal 
geography of the country, and several of which read 
" from sea to sea." Some- of the smaller states, Maryland 
in particular, insisted that these lands must be surren- 
dered as a prelude to any plan of confederation. This 
was at last agreed to, and Maryland made possible the for- 
mation of the Confederation in 1781. This action ulti- 
mately assured the existence of a national government. 
The Confederation now had a territory to govern out- 
side the boundaries of the federated states. This terri- 
tory, although thinly populated, was almost as large as 
all the thirteen original states. Finally, when Manasseh 
Cutler appeared before the Continental Congress with 
a proposition to purchase large tracts of this land, and 
it began to appear not simply in the light of a territory 
to be governed, but also as a source of income, Congress 
roused from its lethargy to almost its only important 
action since it had been legally constituted, — the passing 
of the Ordinance of 1787. 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 85 



This ordinance providing for the organization and 
government of the great territory between the Ohio, the 
Mississippi, the Great Lakes, and the Alleghenies con- 
tains some remarkable provisions. There is, of course, 
the famous one upon which the thirteenth amendment 
to the national constitution was afterward based, pro- 
viding that " There shall be neither slavery nor involun- 
tary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in 
the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have 
been duly convicted." But there is also a complete "bill 
of rights," providing for religious liberty, the right of 
habeas corpus, and trial by jury, representative govern- 
ment, bail for all save capital offenses, moderate fines, 
no cruel and unusual punishments, and also for the 
foundation of a public school system. This latter pro- 
vision was to be little heeded until a movement of 
the working class should force this issue upon the 
people. These provisions, however, when contrasted 
with the proceedings of the constitutional convention, 
show that the Continental Congress had become 
much more of a popular body than was the one that 
wrote the present fundamental law of the United 
States. 

During the time of the Revolution, in spite of this one 
very important action by the Continental Congress, the 
real governing power in the country had been the group 
of individuals who were in the midst of events and were 
making history rather than recording its results in legis- 
lation. These were the men who best incarnated the 
spirit of the rising social class. They were willing that 
the work of legislation, like the work of righting in 
the ranks, should be done by others, providing their 



86 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



hands were upon the levers that moved the social 
machinery. 1 

The American Revolution, like most wars, was fought 
by those who had least interest in its outcome. The 
workers and "embattled farmers," who as " minute men" 
at Concord " fired the shot heard round the world," and 
left the imprint of their bleeding feet at Valley Forge 
and Yorktown, found themselves at the close of the war 
hopelessly indebted to the mercantile and financial class 
of the coast cities. The Continental currency, with 
which the government had paid for supplies, had now 
become valueless in the hands of the producers of wealth. 
One hundred and twelve million dollars had been thus 
extorted from the people. Taxes were most inequitably 
distributed, the poll tax being one of the most common 
methods of taxation. In Massachusetts it was proposed 
to collect over five million dollars by this method from 
90,000 taxpayers. The fisheries were almost wiped out 
during the war and only slowly revived with the coming 
of peace. 2 McMaster says of Vermont: "One half of the 
community was totally bankrupt, the other half plunged 
in the depths of poverty." Of another state he says: 
"It was then the fashion of New Hampshire, as indeed 
it was everywhere, to lock men up in jail the moment 
they were so unfortunate as to owe their fellows a six- 

1 Woodrow Wilson, "History of the American People," Vol. Ill, p. 22 : 
"The common affairs of the country had therefore to be conducted as 
the revolution had in fact been conducted, — not by the authority or the 
resolutions of the Congress, but by the extraordinary activity, enterprise, 
and influence of a few of the leading men in the States who had union and 
harmonious common effort at heart." 

2 American State Papers, "Commerce and Navigation," Vol. I, pp. 
6-21. 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 87 



pence or shilling. Had this law been rigorously executed 
in the autumn of 1785, it is probable that not far from 
two thirds of the community would have been in the 
prisons." 

The burden of debt had been multiplied by the de- 
preciation of currency, and the attempt to collect it in 
specie. To again quote McMaster: " Civil actions were 
multiplied to a degree that seems scarcely credible. The 
lawyers were overwhelmed with cases. The courts could 
not try half that came before them." 1 

The wealthy citizens who had sent their money to war 
that it might breed and multiply found their bonds would 
be of little value unless taxes could be squeezed from the 
workers. The Confederacy had no power to levy taxes, 
or to collect money in any way save by the sale of lands 
and bonds and the issuance of paper money. There were 
no purchasers for any of these commodities. 

The manufacturers who had revolted against British 
tariffs were now looking for a national government to 
assist them with tariff legislation. The Revolution, by 
almost completely stopping importations, had acted on 
the budding manufacturers like a prohibitive tariff. 
Moreover, the exigencies of war created an abnormal 
demand for certain articles, and the Continental Congress 
devoted no small portion of its energies to efforts to en- 
courage domestic manufactures. The moment the war 
ended, on the other hand, there was a flood of importa- 
tions. British manufacturers, especially, were accused 
of "dumping" goods upon the market at less than Lon- 
don prices for the especial purpose of preventing the 

1 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. I, 
p. 302. 



88 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



growth of American manufactures. We are not surprised 
to learn that "By no class of the community was the 
formation of the new government, and its general adop- 
tion by the states, more zealously urged than by the 
friends of American manufactures." 1 

The paramount interest of the time was commercial, 
and it was fitting that commerce should play the largest 
part in the formation of the new government. Com- 
merce demanded a powerful central government. No 
other could afford protection in foreign ports, provide 
for uniform regulations throughout the country, make 
and enforce commercial treaties, and maintain the gen- 
eral conditions essential to profitable trading. As 
Fisher Ames said in the first Congress : — 

"I conceive, sir, that the present constitution was 
dictated by commercial necessity, more than any other 
cause. The want of an efficient government to secure 
the manufacturing interests, and to advance our com- 
merce, was long seen by men of judgment, and pointed 
out by patriots solicitous to promote the general welfare." 2 

All of these interests were confined to the New England 
and Middle states. Unless a class could be found in the 
South that was also interested in a centralized govern- 
ment, there could be little hope of forming a union. In 
the North the farmers were opposed to a central govern- 
ment and the merchants were its friends. In the South 
the reverse was true. There the great planters, who were 
the social rulers, favored the formation of the union. The 

1 Bishop, "History of American Manufactures," Vol. I, p. 422. 

2 Annals of Congress, Vol. I, p. 230. See also "History of Suffolk 
County, Massachusetts," Vol. II, p. 84 ; and W. C. Webster, " General 
History of Commerce," p. 341. 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 



89 



explanation of this is found in the fact that the planters 
of the South did their own exporting, but did it through 
English merchants. The latter were driving a profitable 
trade through their control of importations and the chan- 
nels of export. The merchants were growing rich and 
the planters poor. The latter saw a possibility of relief 
in an internal commerce and in the development of do- 
mestic shipping with the opening of the West Indian 
trade through commercial treaties. 1 

To collect debts, public and private, to levy a tariff 
for the benefit of " infant industries," to protect the 
fisheries and pay bounties to the fishers, to assist the 
Southern planter in marketing his crops, and to secure 
commercial treaties and guard commercial interests in 
all parts of the world a centralized government was 
needed. Those who desired such a government were, 
numerically speaking, an insignificant minority of the 
population, but, once more, they were the class whose 
interests were bound up with progress toward a higher 
social stage. In advancing their interests this wealthy 
class of planters, merchants, and manufacturers was 
really building for future progress. 

The wageworking, farming, and debtor class naturally 
had no desire for a strong central government. These 
desired above all relief from the crushing burden of debt. 
They sought this relief in new issues of paper money, in 
"stay laws" postponing the collection of debts, and in 
restrictions on the powers of the courts. In regard to 
government they cried out for economy and low taxes. 
The ever recurring populistic feud between frontier 

1 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. I, 
pp. 272-273. 



go 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



debtors and coast creditors made its appearance. The 
former were in an overwhelming majority, but they 
lacked cohesion, collective energy, and intelligence, — 
in short, class consciousness. 

It was in Massachusetts that the struggle became 
especially violent. The populistic debtors elected a 
legislature pledged to carry out their program. When 
the legislature met, influences were brought to bear upon 
it by the creditor class of Boston that caused its mem- 
bers to break their pledges. Angered at this anarchistic 
defeat of the popular will, the farmers began to defy and 
intimidate the courts. As almost invariably happens, 
when a working class rises, collectivist ideas found ex- 
pression. General Knox, then Secretary of War, who 
was sent by the Continental Congress to investigate the 
situation, reported that 

" Their creed is that the property of the United States 
has been protected from the confiscation of Britain by 
the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the 
common property of all." 1 

When the courts attempted to force the collection of 
debts from those who had nothing, the desperate debtors 
rallied to arms under the leadership of Daniel Shays, 
a veteran of the Revolution, and captured some of 
the smaller cities. Although there was no money in the 
treasury of Massachusetts with which to carry on the 
functions of government, yet the militia was called out 
to shoot down these starving veterans of the Revolution, 
and the wealthy merchants and bankers of Boston ad- 
vanced the money with which to pay the troops. 2 

1 Irving, "Life of Washington," Vol. IV, p. 451. 

2 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. I, 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 91 



There was a similar situation in Rhode Island, with 
the difference that in this state the debtors were able 
to seize the legislature and force it to do their will. The 
result was something very like civil war, with the debtors 
trying to force their creditors to accept the paper money 
that had been issued. Here, also, we find the collectivist 
idea, coupled with a crude sort of state socialism which, 
as populism, became familiar on the western prairies 
more than a century later. 

"A convention of all the towns in Providence county 
met at Smithfield to consult upon further measures of 
hostility toward the merchants, whom they accused of 
exporting specie, and thus causing the distresses of the 
State. A plan of 1 State trade ' was proposed, to be sub- 
mitted to the General Assembly, and the Governor was 
requested to call a special session for that purpose. The 
plan was for the State to provide vessels and import 
goods on its own account, under direction of a committee 
of the legislature; that produce, lumber, and labor, as 
well as money, should be received in payment of taxes, 
and thus furnish cargoes in return for which specie and 
goods could be obtained. Interest certificates were no 
longer to be received in payment of duties, but the 
private importers were to be compelled to pay them in 
money. The act making notes of hand negotiable was 
to be repealed, and the statute of limitation shortened to 
two years." 1 

These uprisings gave the final jar that was necessary 
to solidify the forces working for a national government. 

pp. 318-319 ; G. R. Minot, "History of the Insurrection in Massachusetts 
in 1786." 

1 S. G. Arnold, "History of the State of Rhode Island," Vol. II, p. 524. 



92 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Until the threat arose of the capture of two or more states 
by the masses, there were many even of the wealthy 
classes who were inclined to think that their interests 
might be best furthered by several separate states. 

"But the rebellion of Shays broke out. In an instant 
public opinion changed completely. Stern patriots, 
who, while all went well, talked of the dangers of baneful 
aristocracies, soon learned to talk of the dangers of bane- 
ful democracies." 1 

There are few things more striking than this complete 
change of front by the budding capitalists of Revolu- 
tionary times in obedience to material class interests. In 
1776 they were all for paper money, restriction of the 
power of the courts, "natural rights," and the whole 
string of democratic principles. By 1786 they had re- 
jected all these principles and were defending most of the 
positions of the English government of King George, 
while the prerevolutionary principles were left for debt- 
ridden farmers and workingmen. It is at least interest- 
ing to learn that the ruling class had even the same 
demagogues to secure popular support, and that Sam 
Adams was now an ardent defender of the creditor 
class. 2 

The framing of the Constitution under these condi- 
tions took on much of the character of a secret conspira- 
tory coup d'etat, such as most historians congratulate 
America on having escaped. The little group of indi- 
viduals who best represented the ruling class, and who 
had dominated throughout the Revolution, were, to 

1 McMaster, " History of the People of the United States," Vol. I, 
P- 391- 

2 J. K. Hosmer, "Sam Adams, The Man of the Town-Meeting," p. 51. 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 



a large extent, losing their control. They now set about 
recapturing it through a secret counter-revolution. 

The first step was an invitation from Washington to 
visit him at his home at Mt. Vernon, extended to com- 
missioners appointed by Maryland and Virginia to con- 
sider methods of regulating commerce in Chesapeake 
Bay. These men arranged for a commercial convention 
at Annapolis, September n, 1786, and an address was 
issued which carefully wove in with the local questions 
general hints of the need for wider national arrangements. 
This whole matter is set forth in a report of the French 
minister, Otto, to his chief, Count Vergennes, and as he was 
more nearly an impartial observer than almost any one 
else who has reported these events, it might be well to let 
him tell the story. He says, writing October 10, 1786 : — 

" Although there are no nobles in America, there is a 
class of men, denominated gentlemen, who, by reason of 
their wealth, their talents, their education, their families, 
or the offices they hold, aspire to a preeminence which 
the people refuse to grant them ; and although many of 
these men have betrayed the interests of their order to 
gain popularity, there reigns among them a connection so 
much the more intimate as they almost all of them dread 
the efforts of the people to despoil them of their posses- 
sions, and, moreover, they are creditors, and therefore 
interested in strengthening the government and watching 
over the execution of the laws. ... By proposing a 
new organization of the general government all minds 
would have been revolted ; circumstances ruinous to the 
commerce of America have happily arisen to furnish the 
reformers with a pretext for introducing innovations. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



"The authors of this proposition (the Annapolis con- 
vention) had no hope nor even desire to see the success of 
this assembly of commissioners which was only intended 
to prepare a question more important than that of com- 
merce. The measures were so well taken that at the end 
of September no more than five states were represented 
in Annapolis, and the commissioners from the northern 
states tarried several days at New York in order to retard 
their arrival. The states which assembled after having 
waited nearly three weeks separated under the pretext 
that they were insufficient in numbers to enter on the 
business, and to justify this dissolution they addressed to 
the different legislatures and to Congress a report.'' 1 

All this scheme is exposed and its character admitted 
by Madison in papers written by him and discovered after 
his death. Delegates to this convention purposely 
remained away in pursuance of a conspiracy to prevent 
the action for which it was ostensibly called. It was 
then possible to go to the Continental Congress with the 
plea that the commercial arrangements for which it was 
pretended these two gatherings had been called, were so 
pressing that a larger body must be convened. The 
Continental Congress then passed a resolution in February, 
1787, saying that it was expedient that a convention of 
delegates from the several states be held in Philadelphia 
in May "for the sole and express purpose of revising the 
Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and 

1 Quoted in H. J. Ford, "The Rise and Growth of American Politics," 
pp. 40-43. See also Morse, "Life of Hamilton," Vol. I, pp. 212-213; 
H. Von Hoist, "Constitutional History of the United States," Vol. I, 
pp. 50-51 ; T. Watson, "Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson," p. 292; 
Schouler, "History of the United States," Vol. I, pp. 32-33. 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 95 



the several legislatures such alterations and provisions 
therein as shall, when agreed to in Congress and con- 
firmed by the states, render the Federal Constitution ade- 
quate to the exigencies of government and the preserva- 
tion of the union." 

This was the only form of legality in the calling of the 
body that formulated the fundamental law of the United 
States; and no sooner had that body assembled than it 
proceeded to break this one link which was supposed to 
give it a legal sanction. It absolutely disregarded the 
conditions of its existence as fixed by Congress, and pro- 
ceeded to formulate an entirely new government, and 
never bothered to report to the Congress to which it was 
supposed to be subordinate. 

After this one short appearance in public, the con- 
spirators again took to darkness. They observed the 
most elaborate precautions to preserve the secrecy of 
their deliberations. They forbade the keeping of any 
notes, and refused to give out any information as to their 
actions. In spite of this rule James Madison took copious 
notes, which were published almost a half century later. 
These notes are almost our only source of information 
concerning the proceedings, as the only other person who 
kept notes left the convention in disgust before it had 
completed its work. As Madison was one of the most 
conservative members of the convention and the one 
most responsible for its conspiratory character, we may 
be sure that if any bias is to be found in his report, it will 
not be in the direction of the unpopular side. 

Nevertheless, these debates, as reported, afford ample 
evidence that the constitutional convention was little 
more than a committee of the merchants, manufacturers, 



96 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



bankers, and planters, met to arrange a government that 
would promote their interests. Only twelve states were 
represented at the beginning, and one of these dropped 
out before the end. Of sixty-five delegates elected only 
fifty-five were ever present, and but thirty-nine signed 
the final report. Throughout the discussions the utmost 
contempt for the mass of the people was displayed. 
Madison and Hamilton, who had most to do with the 
formation of the constitution, were in favor of placing 
power as far as possible from the people and giving prop- 
erty especial representation. The attitude of the con- 
vention is shown by an expression used by Ellsworth of 
Connecticut in opposing any action restricting slavery. 
"Let us not intermeddle," he said. "As population 
increases poor laborers will be so plenty as to render 
slaves useless." 1 

It has been pointed out that with the return of peace 
the wealthy classes, including those who had remained 
Loyalists during the actual fight, returned to power. 2 
The merchants of Boston, frightened at Shays' Rebellion, 3 
the manufacturers of Pennsylvania, anxious for protec- 
tion, 4 and wishing to restrict the growing power of the 
western districts, 5 the commercial classes of the South, 
desiring a central government for the settlement of dis- 
putes concerning navigable rivers, — all of these were 
opposed to democracy. All were anxious to secure their 

1 J. Allen Smith, "The Spirit of American Government," pp. 27-39. 

2 "Memorial History of Boston," Justin Winsor (editor), Vol. IV, 
PP. 74-75- 

3 J. L. Bishop, "History of American Manufacturers," Vol. II, p. 14. 

4 M. Farrand, " Compromises of the Constitution," American His- 
torical Review, p. 482, April, 1904. 

5 William C. Webster, "General History of Commerce," p. 341. 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 



97 



privileges against attack by the discontented debtors, 
frontiersmen, farmers, and wageworkers. 

It was from these classes, inspired by these motives, 
that the delegates were drawn that framed the consti- 
tution. "There is no doubt that the new constitution 
was framed primarily in the interest of the industrial 
and commercial classes, and was finally ratified largely as 
a result of their active and intelligent work in its behalf." 

Having formulated a constitution, the next step was 
to secure something that would at least have the appear- 
ance of a popular acceptance of the document. Since 
fully two thirds of the population were opposed to any 
such adoption, and remained so long after it had become 
a law, it might have appeared that the framers of the 
constitution had an impossible task upon their hands. 
Fortunately for them it was not necessary to take a 
popular vote. The referendum had not yet been accepted 
as a principle of political action, and the statement of the 
Declaration of Independence that "all governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed " 
had been relegated to the limbo of political platitudes. 

The work of imposing the constitution upon the coun- 
try was further lightened by the fact that at least three 
fourths of those who would to-day constitute the elec- 
torate were then disfranchised. Moreover, the disfran- 
chised ones were just those who were almost unanimous 
against the constitution. Property qualifications shut 
out the working class of the cities and the debtors of the 
back country. Out of a population of 3,000,000 not more 
than 120,000 were entitled to even vote for those who 
were to constitute the state conventions that were to 
consider the constitution. 



98 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The delegates to these conventions were generally 
elected on the same basis as the members of the various 
state legislatures. This again gave an increased advan- 
tage to the defenders of the constitution, as the states had 
been districted with the definite object in view of dis- 
criminating against the back-country districts. 

In a monograph on "The Geographical Distribution of 
the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitu- 
tion," by Orin G. Libby, the economic interest back of 
the delegates to each of the state conventions is carefully 
investigated. The result shows a recognition of class 
interests almost marvelous when we consider the generally 
undeveloped industrial condition of the time. The 
frontiersmen, the farmers, the debtors, the people who 
lived in the country and possessed little property, were 
almost solidly against the constitution. The merchants, 
the money lenders, the lawyers, the great landowners, 
and the planters, and those directly under their influence 
chose delegates who voted for the constitution. 

In spite of gerrymandering and disfranchisement, in 
spite of the marvelous special pleading of Hamilton and 
Madison, whose political pamphlets in advocacy of the 
constitution were destined to become the classic com- 
mentaries on that document ; in spite of the tremendous 
influence of its powerful friends, it was long before a 
sufficient number of the states would indorse it to make 
possible a further step. Many of those who did indorse it 
qualified that indorsement with a provision for a "bill 
of rights/' and this was provided for at the first session 
of Congress. Otherwise there would have been no 
guarantee of freedom of speech, assemblage, and press, or 
of trial by jury, or freedom of contract, or of any of those 



FORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 



things which constitutions, even at that time, were sup- 
posed to be established mainly to secure. 

Rhode Island refused even this qualified indorsement. 
Although the Articles of Confederation provided for 
unanimous action before any law should be binding, yet 
steps were taken to organize the new government as 
soon as ten states had given their agreement, and finally 
Rhode Island was threatened with force to compel its 
consent. 

To sum up : the organic law of this nation was formu- 
lated in secret session by a body called into existence 
through a conspiratory trick, and was forced upon a 
disfranchised people by means of a dishonest apportion- 
ment in order that the interests of a small body of wealthy 
rulers might be served. This should not blind us to the 
fact that this small ruling class really represented prog- 
ress, that a unified government was essential to that in- 
dustrial and social growth which has made this country 
possible. It also should not blind us to the fact that there 
was nothing particularly sacred about the origin of this 
government which should render any attempt to change 
it sacrilegious. 



CHAPTER IX 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT 

The industrial foundation for national solidarity was 
slight when the American government was born in 1789. 
The ruling classes of the different states had been drawn 
together by the common fear of a proletarian uprising 
and the common need for a central government to further 
a few immediate interests. A decade might easily bring 
such a divergence in these interests that the central 
government would disintegrate. The only thing that 
could prevent this would be the growth of a national 
industrial life. 

The size of any industrial unit and of the political 
establishment based upon it depend upon the character 
and extent of the transportation system. The method 
of transporting goods determines the extent of the mar- 
ket. It is seldom that a political unit is larger than the 
circle of the market for the great staples of production. 
There have been exceptions to this rule, but they have 
usually been short-lived or had some peculiar explanation. 

When Washington took the presidential chair, methods 
of transportation in the United States differed little from 
those which prevailed in Rome when she was mistress 
of the then known world. What advantage there might 
be in such a comparison was with the older civilization. 

100 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 



IOI 



The commerce of Rome in the days of Caesar moved over 
roads whose very ruins are the wonder and admiration 
of modern engineers. American commerce at the close 
of the eighteenth century was painfully dragged over 
corduroy roads, through unbridged rivers and morasses 
of mud, that made a profitable interchange of heavy 
goods over long distances impossible. 

The arrangements for the transmission of intelligence 
were little more effective than those for the carrying of 
merchandise. When independence was declared, there 
were only twenty-eight post offices in all the thirteen 
colonies. Fourteen years later, when Washington had 
occupied the presidential chair for a year and the new 
administrative machinery was fairly well installed, there 
were still but seventy-five. Yet the population was over 
three millions. A population of equal number to-day, 
if as widely dispersed, would have several thousand post 
offices to minister to its wants. 

To maintain even these miserable accommodations, 
postal rates were so high as to be almost prohibitive for 
ordinary intercourse among the poorer classes of the 
population. The minimum charge for a single sheet of 
paper going less than thirty miles was six cents. Then 
the rates rapidly increased until to send a single sheet 
more than four hundred and fifty miles cost twenty-five 
cents. Additional sheets increased the amount still 
further. Newspapers were taken only at the pleasure of 
the mail carriers. Consequently correspondence was 
largely confined to communications on public matters. 

Only four cities had a population of over 10,000. Of 
these New York led with about 30,000, having but re- 
cently pushed into first place above Philadelphia with 



102 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



28,000. Boston claimed 18,000, Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, 16,000, and Baltimore, 13,000. 

Four fifths of the population were engaged in agricul- 
ture, or perhaps it would be more nearly correct to say 
that the group of diversified industries which were then 
included under the name of agriculture embraced four 
fifths of the industrial life of the time. But these farmers 
harvested their grain with sickles such as Ruth saw in the 
fields of Boaz. They threshed their grain with a flail, 
such as their Aryan ancestors brought from the plains 
of central Asia when they set forth on that long racial 
march toward the setting sun, of which the colonization 
of America was the latest, longest step. Although 
Jefferson was mathematically calculating a plow that 
would do its work with the least expenditure of energy, 
two generations were to come and go before plows 
constructed upon scientific principles were to appear on 
American farms. In the meantime, the fields were dug 
up with sharpened sticks pointed with iron, fashioned 
much after those of which present-day travelers to Egypt 
and India and central Russia send postal card photo- 
graphs to friends at home. 

Cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep were of a character that 
no modern farmer would permit to encumber his fields. 
Cattle were kept almost exclusively for their hides and 
meat, and as draft animals. Here and there in New 
England some butter and cheese were made. But the 
cow as a machine for the transformation of a " balanced 
ration" into a definite quantity of milk and cream at 
the least possible expense had scarcely been dreamed of. 
She must still be capable of foraging her food in the forest 
through the greater part of the year and of enduring the 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 



rigors of a Northern winter without shelter. " Hollow 
horn," a disease caused by extreme cold, exposure, and 
insufficient feed, killed many animals yearly. 

Although Messenger, the father of the American 
Hamiltonian strain of trotting horses, was imported in 
1786, and Justin Morgan, the sire of the once famous 
Morgan horses (a strain that great efforts are now being 
made to revive), was born in 1793, the horses of this time 
were few in number and generally miserable in character. 

The hog of that day was compelled to live in an en- 
vironment, one of whose conditions of survival was to 
hunt his own food in the forest and dodge wild animals 
while doing so, and then be able to stand a drive of sev- 
eral hundred miles to a distant market. 1 He bore little 

1 Parkinson, who wrote of a tour made about this time, described the 
hogs that he saw in the following language (p. 290) : " The real American 
hog is what is termed the wood-hog ; they are long in the leg, narrow on 
the back, short in the body, flat on their sides, with a long snout, very 
rough in their hair, in make more like the fish called a perch than any- 
thing I can describe. You may as well think of stopping a crow as those 
hogs. They will go to a distance from a fence, take a run, and leap 
through the rails, three or four feet from the ground, turning themselves 
sidewise. These hogs suffer such hardship as no other animal could en- 
dure. It is customary to keep them in the woods all winter, as there are 
no threshing- or fold-yards; and they must live on the roots of trees, or 
something of that sort ; but they are poor beyond any creature that I 
ever saw. That is probably the cause why the American pork is so fine. 
I am not certain with American keeping and treatment if they are not the 
best ; for I never saw any animal live without food, except this : 
and I am pretty sure they nearly do that. When they are fed, the 
flesh may well be sweet ; it is all young, though the pig be ten years olde 
and like pigs in general, they only act as a conveyance to carry corn to 
market." For further information on agricultural conditions at this time 
see H. E. Alvord, " Dairy Development in the United States " in Report 
of Bureau of Animal Industry for 1899, p. 245 et seq.; Captain William- 
son, "Description of the Settlement of the Genesee Country in the State 
of New York" (1799), pp. 32-41 ; W. Faux, "Memorable Days in Amer- 



104 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



resemblance to the highly perfected pork-producing 
machine of the modern fat stock show. 

Considerable effort had been made to improve the 
breed of sheep because of the pressing need of a domestic 
supply of wool for weaving. Laws forbidding the slaugh- 
ter of sheep for mutton had been passed in several states, 
and premiums were quite generally offered to encourage 
sheep breeding. The first Merinos were imported in 
1793, and frequent importations from Spain followed in 
spite of the efforts of Spain to prevent such action. 

Southern industry still rested primarily upon the 
tobacco crop, which was less profitable than it had once 
been. Exhaustive methods of exploiting the soil in its 
production were driving the plantations farther and 
farther from the seaboard and the river banks. Cotton 
was still ginned by hand, although Eli Whitney was 
working on the model of the first cotton gin. Hand 
ginning was so expensive that cotton raising was not 
profitable. We are not, therefore, much surprised to 
learn that there was a strong abolition sentiment in 
Maryland and Virginia, where the slaves on the worn- 
out tobacco plantations were no longer earning their 
"keep," and where they could be bought for from one 
to two hundred dollars. The rice industry, too, was just 
ready for a transformation. The first machine for 
winnowing rice was invented in 1749. A machine for 
hulling and another for threshing it from the straw 
were invented just as the eighteenth century was 
closing. 

ica" (1823), pp. 72-73, 113, 139, 143; Dodge, "West Virginia," p. 43; 
William H. Smith, "History of the State of Indiana," Vol. II, pp. 661-662 ; 
Henry Adams, "History of the United States," Vol. I, pp. 16-17. 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 



Manufacturing was still almost entirely in the house- 
hold stage. Evidences of a coming change were, however, 
apparent in many directions. The woolen industry, that 
had led the industrial revolution just then in progress in 
England, was the first to enter upon the factory stage on 
this side the Atlantic. England was well aware of the 
advantage which the newly invented machinery was 
giving her manufacturers in the markets of the world, and 
was seeking in every way to maintain her monopoly. 
Heavy penalties were directed against those who should 
seek to export any of the new machinery, and several 
attempts to evade these prohibitions failed. In 1790 
Samuel Slater, who had worked in the Arkwright mills 
in England, came to the United States, and as he had 
stowed away the plans only in his head, he was not 
stopped at the customhouse. He built a complete 
factory the next year in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. 

At the very beginning industrial evolution in the 
United States showed one peculiarity that was to dis- 
tinguish it from that of European countries. It was un- 
hampered by traditions and feudal institutions and cus- 
toms, and struck out boldly in new and characteristic 
paths. In England the woolen industry had always been 
divided into several processes, each carried on under a 
different roof, and this division was kept up even after 
the factory system was introduced. Carding and comb- 
ing was one industry, spinning another, and weaving, 
dyeing, and finishing were each separated from all the 
others. Each of these had its own building, owner, in- 
dustrial organization, purchasing and marketing facilities. 
From the very beginning all this was swept aside in the 
United States, and all these processes were made a part 



106 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of one act of production under one roof and one manage- 
ment. 1 

Iron and steel were still produced largely as they had 
been for centuries. But the new "puddling" method 
had just been introduced ; power was being used to 
drive the blowers, and everywhere there were signs of a 
coming change. One of the great "household" indus- 
tries of New England was the manufacture of nails. Each 
family had its own little anvil, forge, and simple tools. 
The iron was distributed at regular intervals, and the 
completed product purchased by those who, a little later, 
were to gather these workers together in great factories 
tending giant machines, each of which would produce 
more nails than a whole community of household 
workers. 

The shoe trade was already concentrating around 
Boston. But shoes were still made with lapstone, awl, 
and waxed end. 

Superficially industry was sleeping, as it had slept for 
centuries. A closer study revealed the first movements 
that heralded a new awakening. 

Fitch's steamboat was making regular trips up and 
down the Delaware in 1790. His neighbors looked upon 
him as a half-insane crank. He was to share the fate of 
a multitude of those who have lightened the labor of the 
world. He died in poverty, the butt of ridicule, while 
another man and generation reaped fame and wealth 
from his ideas. 

The great industry of the time was shipbuilding and 
commerce. New England ships were turning watery 

1 "The New England States," Vol. I. Monograph by S. D. N. North, 
"New England Woolen Manufacturers," p. 202. 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 



107 



furrows in every ocean highway and harbor. Her mer- 
chants were already the most powerful in the world, and 
were accumulating the capital which, invested in the 
machinery just then being conceived by the minds of 
inventors, was destined during the next generation to 
change the whole social structu 

It was the germinal periotK>f capitalism. The begin- 
nings of the greatest of all social transformations were 
appearing, but were attracting little attention. 



CHAPTER X 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE 

Three divisions of the ruling class united to form the 
constitution and establish the new government. These 
were the merchants, the manufacturers, and the planters. 
The first two at once formed an alliance against the latter 
to secure control of government. In this alliance the 
first dominated, since the carrying trade was by far the 
most highly developed. Its units of capital were larger, 
its owners more clearly conscious of their class interests, 
and better equipped to further those interests than the 
owners of the essentials of any other industry. In this 
America was following in the already well-worn track 
of social evolution. Merchants have generally been the 
advance guard of the capitalist army, gathering the cap- 
ital and political power to be later employed and enjoyed 
by the manufacturers. 

Events were especially favorable for the American 
carrying trade. The year of Washington's inauguration 
saw the fall of the B as tile and the beginning of the French 
Revolution. Everywhere the capitalist class was coming 
into power. Napoleon was to come upon the heels of 
the Revolution, and for a generation western Europe 
was to do little besides wallow in its own blood. Unless 
this fact is kept constantly in mind it is impossible to 
understand events on this side the Atlantic. While the 
great commercial nations were fighting one another for 

108 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE 



the carrying trade of the world America ran away with 
the bone over which they were quarreling. 

The man who best incarnated the interests and ideas 
of the merchants and manufacturers of this time was 
Alexander Hamilton of New York. So true is this that 
the history of the first twelve years after the adoption 
of the constitution has been very rightfully designated 
as the "Hamiltonian period. " 

The constitution had been formulated and foisted upon 
the people largely by stealth and deception, aided by a 
closely restricted suffrage. Even this would not have 
been possible without the support of the plantation owners 
of the South. The Southern planter, however, belonged 
to a social stage that was already of the past. He was 
to make some desperate efforts to control the American 
government, was to succeed for a time, and to go down 
finally only after the bloodiest war of the century. At 
this moment his economic power appeared to be upon the 
wane. The cotton gin had not yet produced its revolu- 
tion, and tobacco cultivation had passed its zenith. The 
manufacturing class, on the contrary, was just beginning 
to feel its strength, and it was with this class, its own 
first-born, that the merchant class joined hands. In this 
alliance we find the key to the legislation of the period. 

The first bill introduced into the new Congress was a 
tariff bill. Its protective features would be considered 
very mild to-day, but the debate shows that it was con- 
sidered a protective measure. This discussion brought 
out all the contending interests, as every such bill since 
has done. Pennsylvania wanted a tariff on molasses, 
rum, and steel. Massachusetts opposed the first and 
was doubtful of the second, because of the part they 



110 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



played in her commerce, but was agreed upon the latter. 
The South opposed a tax on the last two and favored 
taxing the first. The West, consisting of Kentucky 
and Tennessee, both of whom were clamoring for admis- 
sion to the Union, was cajoled into the protection camp 
by a tariff on hemp to offset their protests against the 
tax on salt, levied at the behest of the coast merchants 
and fishers, and bearing heavily on the back country 
cattle raisers. 

This tariff had hardly been enacted into law before 
Hamilton came forward with the series of proposals whose 
comprehensiveness and unity of purpose and far-sighted 
outlook stamp him as one of the greatest exponents of 
rising class interests, and therefore one of the greatest of 
what the world calls statesmen that the century has 
produced. 

These measures were designed to carry still farther the 
plot which began with the constitution. They proposed 
an interpretation of that document to which but a small 
minority of the small body who formed it would have 
agreed. It had been difficult enough to secure its adop- 
tion when it was supposed to leave a large measure of 
autonomy to the states. Now Hamilton proposed and 
carried through a program of legislation that well-nigh 
destroyed this autonomy. 

Commerce demands a strong central government 
capable of extending its influence wherever ships sail and 
goods are sold. To secure such a government having 
its own sources of income, exercising direct control over 
the citizen, and tied tightly to the possessors of financial 
power, was Hamilton's object. 

The three most important measures which went to the 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE in 

building up of this structure were: first, the funding of 
the national and state debts with the assumption of the 
latter by the national government; second, the estab- 
lishment of a national bank; third, the introduction of 
a protective tariff and excise tax. 

Nothing is so impressive to the bourgeois mind as 
property relations on a large scale. A government with 
a great national debt, an interest in a bank, and an in- 
dependent source of revenue fulfilled all ideals in this 
respect. 

The national debt, domestic and foreign, which was 
inherited by the new government from the old Confed- 
eration amounted to about $42,000,000. Hamilton 
proposed that this should be increased by the nation 
assuming the debts incurred by the states during 
the Revolution and still unpaid, amounting to over 
$30,000,000. This would give a national debt of nearly 
$75,000,000. Although there are many individuals at 
the present time who could undertake the payment of 
such a debt, it appeared of mammoth proportions to the 
men of 1790. 

The certificates of indebtedness had been steadily de- 
preciating during the Confederation. They were now 
almost worthless. They were held largely by specula- 
tors who had bought them for but a few cents on the 
dollar. These speculators at once gave their adherence 
to the proposal to make the national government re- 
sponsible. 

The Southern states were especially opposed to this 
move to strengthen the national government at the ex- 
pense of the states. The plantation interests were much 
more closely united to the states and had little need of 



112 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



a strong central government. Moreover, several of the 
Southern states had already paid their debts, and this 
new proposal would simply mean that they would be 
required to assist in bearing the burdens of other states. 1 

The South was very anxious that the national capital 
should be located in their section. For this Hamilton 
and those he represented cared little or nothing. They 
were interested in more substantial things. So Hamilton 
arranged a bargain with Jefferson. By its terms enough 
votes were to be given by Hamilton to secure the location 
of the capital on the Potomac on condition that Jefferson 
delivered sufficient Southern votes to carry the measure, 
providing for the assumption of state debts. After it 
was all over, Jefferson made a loud complaint about 
getting the worst of the bargain, seeming to forget that 
bargains are made with just that object in view. 

Hamilton's supporters insisted that the certificates of 
indebtedness should be paid in full, and this without 
regard to the amounts paid for such certificates by the 
present holders. From the point of view of expediency 
(which is much the same as statesmanship) this was un- 
doubtedly correct. But when this action was defended 
on ethical grounds, with high-sounding protestations of 

1 J. S. Bassett, "The Federalist System," p. 34 : "The states which had 
the largest unpaid debts were naturally the most anxious for funding. Of 
these Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina were most notable. 
On the other hand, the states having the small debts were against the 
measure, and among them was Virginia, who had paid much of her 
Revolutionary debt through the sale of western lands. . . . Those 
persons, and there were many, who favored a strong central government 
also declared for assumption. In the wake of Virginia followed the states 
south of her, save South Carolina, while New England was for assump- 
tion. The middle states divided, the commercial parts going for, and the 
agricultural parts against, the measure." 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE 113 



honesty, one is apt to be reminded of another debt that 
was being repudiated at the very moment such strenuous 
efforts were being made to pay this one. This was the 
debt created by forcing the Continental paper money 
upon farmers in payment (?) for their produce, upon 
laborers as wages for their toil, upon soldiers in exchange 
for their lives and their sufferings. These bills had been 
forced upon such persons by all the power of civil, crim- 
inal, and military law, backed up by every form of social 
ostracism, mob violence, and public pressure that could 
be devised. 

Those to whom it was owed had given, not of their 
abundance like the holders of the certificates of indebted- 
ness, but of their poverty. This debt amounted to over 
$100,000,000. It was absolutely repudiated by the gov- 
ernment of Hamilton. That repudiation, and consequent 
loss by the producing class, was one of the causes of the 
terrible poverty that prevailed. It is at least possible 
that some of the " prosperity" that followed the enact- 
ment of Hamilton's measures was due to the fact that the 
workers were permitted to produce for use and exchange 
instead of for confiscation through a useless currency. 1 

1 Jefferson has thus described the process of funding and assumption : 
" After the expedient of paper money had exhausted itself, certificates 
of debt were given to the individual creditors, with assurance of payment 
as soon as the United States should be able. But the distresses of these 
people often obliged them to part with these for the half, the fifth, and 
even a tenth of their value ; and speculators had made a trade of cozen- 
ing them from their holders, by the most fraudulent practices, and per- 
suasion that they would never be paid. In the bill for funding and pay- 
ing these Hamilton made no difference between the original holders and 
the fraudulent purchasers of this paper. Great and just repugnance arose 
at putting these two classes of creditors on the same footing, and great 
exertions were used to pay the former the full value, and to the latter 
1 



114 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The class of bankers was just appearing There were 
only four banks in the entire country. To supply needed 
banking facilities and tie this powerful interest to the 
national government, Hamilton proposed a national 
bank. He united this proposal to his debt plan in a most 
skillful manner. The bank was to have a capital of 
$10,000,000. The national government took $2,000,000 
of this, receiving in return a loan of the same amount. 

The clever feature of the organization was that the 
certificates of debt were to be accepted for 7 5 per cent of 
the value of any number of shares of stock. As the bank 
was assured of a monopoly for ten years, its stock, and 
therefore the certificates of debt, were above par almost 
from the beginning. Yet it was noticed that although 
the shares were largely oversubscribed, nearly all the pur- 
chasers lived north of the Potomac. 

The vote in Congress for its establishment was a direct 
reflection of the possession of the shares. The measure 

the price only which he had paid with interest. But this would have 
prevented the game which was to be played, and for which the minds of 
greedy members were already tutored and prepared. When the trial 
of strength on these several efforts had indicated the form in which the 
bill would finally pass, this being known within doors sooner than without 
and especially than to those who were in distant parts of the Union, the 
base scramble began. Couriers and relay horses by land, and swift 
sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all directions, . . . and this 
paper was bought up at 5 / and even as low as 2/ in the pound, before 
the holder knew that Congress had already provided for its redemption 
at par. Immense sums were thus filched from the poor and ignorant, and 
fortunes accumulated by those who had been poor enough before. Men 
thus enriched by the dexterity of a leader would follow of course the 
chief who was leading them to fortune, and become the zealous instru- 
ments of all his enterprises." This passage has been criticized by the 
defenders of Hamilton who have claimed that it accused Hamilton of 
dishonesty. That it does not do this is plain to any unbiased reader, 
and there is every reason to believe that it describes actual facts. 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE 115 



was carried by the solid vote of the Northern commercial 
and manufacturing states against the solid opposition of 
the plantation states of the South. 

The assumption and funding of the debt by the national 
government created a bondholding, interest-receiving 
class who naturally worshiped their creator. It also 
made necessary a steady national income. If the national 
government was to pay money regularly and directly to 
one class of citizens, it must be able to take it directly 
and regularly from another class. 

The next step in Hamilton's program included a pro- 
tective tariff and an excise tax. His famous "Report 
on Manufactures," submitted in advocacy of a protective 
tariff, is admittedly the ablest document produced by 
more than a century of tariff discussion. There is one 
essential point in which his argument differs from that 
offered by high tariff advocates of the present time. 
Hamilton was not troubled with universal suffrage. It 
was not necessary for him to placate the "labor vote." 
He spoke only from the manufacturers' point of view. 
Therefore he gave as one of the reasons for a tariff the 
high wages paid in this country, and proceeded upon the 
basis that such wages were an undesirable handicap which 
would be overcome as the country grew older. 

On the question of child labor also he would scarcely 
use the language about to be quoted if he were spokesman 
for the present high tariff. He says : — 

"It is worthy of particular remark that, in general, 
women and children are rendered more useful, and the 
latter more early useful, by manufacturing establish- 
ments, than they would otherwise be. Of the num- 
ber of persons employed in the cotton manufactories of 



Il6 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Great Britain it is computed that four sevenths are women 
and children, of whom the greater proportion are children 
and many of a tender age." 

The protective tariff, again, like the bank and the 
national debt, created a class (the manufacturers) pecul- 
iarly dependent upon the national government, and who 
could be reckoned upon to rally to its support and to 
demand further favors in return for that support. 

The rapid growth of manufactures was hindered by 
the unwillingness of men to work for wages when a whole 
great continent of untrodden fertile land lay at the west- 
ern doors of society ready to yield up its bounty to whom- 
ever could get upon it and use his labor. Benjamin 
Franklin had seen this fact and had expressed an opinion 
that while free land existed, manufacturing would be im- 
possible because no one would work for wages. 

This land was now in the hands of the national govern- 
ment, and we find this taking steps to limit settlement 
and thereby create a body of wageworkers. Acting upon 
the advice of Hamilton, it was provided that no land 
should be sold from the public domain except in plots of 
not less than nine square miles. To still further debar 
the small farmer the price of even these great tracts was 
fixed at a minimum of two dollars an acre. But lest the 
work of the land speculators should be interfered with, 
long credit was extended to those who could give satis- 
factory security. 1 

1 Ugo Rabbeno, " American Commercial Policy," p. 176 et seq., explains 
the working of this policy in detail and adds : " Thus at an epoch when 
it was not yet possible to initiate a protective policy, which would only 
have made for the interest of too small a class of capitalists, a land pol- 
icy was nevertheless introduced, which favored all the interests of the 
capitalists, whether manufacturers — by excluding laborers from the 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE 117 



The moderately protective tariff and the land policy 
combined with a most intense public sentiment in favor 
of domestic products, amounting to a boycott on foreign 
products where the domestic was attainable, led to a 
rapid development of manufactures. 

The excise tax filled another role in the working out of 
Hamilton's plan. It had been supposed that the national 
government would have no direct connection with in- 
dividuals, but would reach them only through the state 
governments. It was with this understanding that the 
constitution had been finally adopted. This did not suit 
Hamilton's plans, nor the interests of those he represented. 
He wished to bring the central government into direct 
contact with the citizens in their homes. This was the 
principal purpose of the tax upon the production of 
whisky. € 

Such a tax was peculiarly fitted to accomplish the pur- 
pose in view. It was certain to bring about a conflict 
with a class already hostile to the central government, and 
this a class without influence in determining legislation. 
Corn was the principal crop on the frontier. The range 
within which it can be marketed in its original form and 
with crude methods of transportation is extremely limited. 
It can, however, be changed into two forms that admit 
of extensive and economical transportation, — pork and 
whisky. The second of these affords by far the greater 
profits. It is therefore an invariable rule of historical 
interpretation that a settlement within the corn belt 
with imperfect transportation facilities will always have 

soil and compelling them to work for wages — or agriculturists, by leav- 
ing the field open to speculative undertakings on a large scale exclu- 
sively. See also Schouler, " History of United States," Vol. I, pp. 215-216. 



Ii8 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



"moonshine stills." This rule has held good for more 
than a century, and clear across the continent, without 
regard to the morality or general law-abiding character 
of the population. 

The frontiersmen of Pennsylvania could see no reason 
why they should not be permitted to market their corn 
as a beverage unhindered by a revenue tax. Perhaps 
some of them had heard of the patriotic smugglers of 
pre-Revolutionary days, or thought that " taxation 
without representation" was still a crime, and, since they 
were nearly all disfranchised by property qualifications, 
they attempted to resist the law. 

This gave Hamilton the opportunity for which he had 
been waiting. Although the " Whisky Rebellion," as 
the few isolated attacks upon the revenue officers were 
called, was of insignificant proportions, Hamilton suc- 
ceeded in inducing Washington to call upon the troops 
from the neighboring states, until an army of 15,000 was 
assembled and marched through the riotous localities. 
This overwhelming show of force established a precedent 
for direct interference by the national government with 
the internal affairs of a state, and gave evidence of the 
possession of sufficient power to enforce the decrees of 
the central government. 1 

This completed the revolution begun when that con- 
ference was called at Annapolis. The whole character 
of governmental institutions had been transformed. The 

1 Dewey, "Financial History of the United States," p. 106: "The 
tax was regarded with hostility, particularly in the agricultural regions 
of the Middle and Southern States. It was asserted that the commercial 
and importing interests of New England disliked the tariff, but looked 
with great complacency upon an excise upon an industry in which they 
were not greatly concerned." 



RULE OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE 119 



principles of the Declaration of Independence had long 
ago been cast aside. The spirit of democracy which was 
roused to win that struggle had been crushed, and social 
control had been vested in the class whose lineal descend- 
ants have held it until the present time. That such 
action was essential if a great and powerful nation was 
to arise upon this continent, few will deny. 

Without a strong, central government, controlled by 
the commercial and manufacturing class at this time, it 
would have been impossible to have laid the foundation 
for the great development of subsequent years. 



CHAPTER XI 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 

Commerce had progressed with seven-league strides 
under Hamilton's regime. Aided by the upheaval in 
Europe, American foreign trade grew from $43,000,000 in 
1791 to $204,000,000 in 1801. 1 Nevertheless, the mer- 
chants were driven from power. There were many 
reasons for this, not all of them directly due to the clash 
of immediate industrial interests. 

The Federalists seem to have become drunk with 
power. They took the unpopular side in the French 
Revolution, and sought to suppress all expressions of 
sympathy with the Revolutionists. The better to do 
this they passed the "Alien and Sedition Laws," vesting 
extraordinary powers in the President for the punish- 
ment of those who criticized the government, and giving 
him the power summarily to deport foreigners. There 
was much opposition to this growing centralization of 
autocratic power. This brought support to other divi- 
sions of the budding capitalist class rather than to the 
merchants. 

The principal industrial divisions of the population 
struggling for the control of government were the small 
farmers, the frontiersmen, the manufacturers, the mer- 
chants, and the Southern plantation owners. It will be 
at once noted that these overlap in the actual processes 

1 William C. Webster, "General History of Commerce," p. 352. 
120 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 121 



of industry. This was still more true of their political 
interests. Consequently any exact analysis of the play 
of industrial forces as reflected in political events is al- 
most impossible. 

Agriculture in the sense of small, diversified farming 
was still by far the most common industry. It was much 
more " diversified " than is advised to-day by even the 
most enthusiastic opponents of "one-crop" farming. 
The compilers of the census of 18 10 tell us that they have 
excluded many " doubtful articles" from the manufac- 
turing schedules, which 

" . . . from their very nature were nearly allied to agricul- 
ture, including cotton pressing, flour and meal, grain and 
sawmills, barrels for packing, malt, pot and pearl ashes, 
maple and cane sugar, molasses, rosin, pitch, slates, 
bricks, tiles, saltpeter, indigo, red and yellow ochre, 
hemp and hemp mills, fisheries, wine, ground plaster, 
etc., all together estimated at $25,850,795, making the 
aggregate value of manufactures of every description in 
the United States in 1810 equal to $198,613,484." 

Here we are at the very birth of the family of modern 
industries from the great mother industry of agriculture. 
The whole process of industrial evolution consists of a 
gradual separation of the production of more and more 
"doubtful articles" from farming. 

Many children of agriculture were just preparing to 
leave the farm at this time and to take up their abode in 
factories. The making of cloth was just passing from 
the "household" stage, where production is in the family 
and for the family, to the "domestic" stage, where, while 
production still goes on in the home, the product seeks 
an outside market. 



122 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



This domestic stage, of so much importance in Euro- 
pean industrial history, was to be but a short tarrying 
place for American industry on its road to the factory. 
The two stages were overlapping at this time. The great 
bulk of manufacturing was still in the household stage. 
An important portion had reached the point of domestic 
production for market. Then we learn that " fifteen 
cotton mills were erected in New England before the year 
1808, working at that time almost 8000 spindles, and pro- 
ducing about 300,000 pounds of yarn a year. Returns 
had been received of 87 mills erected at the end of the 
year 1809, 62 of which were in operation, and worked 
31,000 spindles." 1 

By 181 2 a woolen mill in Middletown, Connecticut, was 
being run by one of Oliver Evans' engines, invented, 
designed, constructed, and operated in the United States. 2 
The relative importance of the different stages of indus- 
trial production of cloth is shown by the report of the 
census of 1810 that 21,211,262 yards of linen, 16,581,299 
of cotton, and 9,528,266 of woolen goods were made in 
families, out of a total production of about 75,000,000 
yards. Note that at this period linen leads, with cotton 
and woolen following. Soon cotton will press to the 
front and linen be found dragging far in the rear. 

The manufacturing interests were still individualistic, 
or merged with agriculture. The tariff had aided them, 
but they were not sufficiently numerous, coherent, nor 
energetic to become a political factor. 3 

1 Leander Bishop, "History of American Manufactures," Vol. II, 
p. 160. 

2 N ties' Register, Feb. 1, 181 2, p. 406. 

3 Edwin Stan wood, "American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth 
Century," p. 123: "One cannot be surprised that while the foreign 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 123 



In the closing year of Washington's administration 
an epoch-making invention had appeared that wrought 
a revolution throughout a broad section of the country. 
This was the cotton gin of Eli Whitney. This inven- 
tion was the last link that made possible the factory 
system in the cloth industry. It furnished the cheap 
cotton that laid the foundation of the factory system of 
England and the world. It increased the production 
of cotton in the United States one hundred fold in the 
seven years following its appearance. 

By making profitable the cultivation of the short- 
fibered upland cotton plant it released chattel slavery and 
the plantation system from the confines of the tide-water 
region, and sent them on their career of conquest along 
the foothills of the Alleghenies to Mississippi, Louisiana, 
and Texas. It wiped out, almost in a day, the glimmering 
sentiment for abolition which a constantly falling price 
of slaves had aroused in the breasts of Washington, 
Jefferson, Madison, and other Virginia tobacco growers. 
It created a new industrial, and therefore a new political, 
power, — the slave-owning cotton planter, who was soon 
to grasp at national domination, to secure it after a short 
division of power with allied forces, and then to rule su- 

trade was growing rapidly and while agriculture was flourishing under 
the double stimulus of a rapidly increasing and of a profitable foreign 
vent . . . little attention should be paid to the introduction of manu- 
factures. There was ample employment for all disposable capital in 
the traffic which gave such large returns; there was no surplus labor 
to be drawn into new industrial enterprises. Occupation could be found 
for every man with a mechanical turn in building ships, in building and 
furnishing the new dwellings and shops required by population and trade, 
in blacksmithing, shoemaking and other trades connected with the 
shelter, food and clothing of the people." See also succeeding pages 
to p. 127. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



preme for more than a generation and to be overthrown 
only when the wage-buying capitalist should wrest the 
scepter of power by four years of terrible civil war. 

This new and vigorous industrial interest, pulsing with 
power, present and potential, contributed strongly to 
the overthrow of Hamiltonian Federalism and the in- 
stallation of Jeffersonian individualism, although, as we 
shall see, the contrast was not so sharp as is sometimes 
thought. 

It was not the old planters of the seaboard that placed 
Jefferson in the presidential chair. On the contrary, 
these were more generally Federalist in their sympathies. 
They were united by many ties of the past, if not of the 
present, with the New England merchants. 1 

But the new upland cotton raisers were making com- 
mon cause with the back country farmers amid whom 
they were living. With these were allied the great body 
of frontiersmen who had been pouring through Cumber- 
land Gap, down the Ohio, and out along the Genesee 
River in New York. These men were always separatist, 
individualistic, and Jefferson's philosophy appealed to 
them. Besides they had learned of the opposition of 
isolated New England to Western expansion and the 
Western country, and this antagonism had not lost any- 
thing in the telling as it traveled to the West, and it was 
most cordially returned with ample interest. 

Jay's treaty with England in 1794 had not provided 
for the navigation of the Mississippi and had almost 
raised a rebellion in the West as a consequence. The 
Southern cotton planters were also apt to remember that 
John Jay had known so little of that industry that he had 

1 Basset, "The Federalist System," pp. 45, 46. 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 125 

permitted the inclusion of an article forbidding the ex- 
port of cotton in American ships, because he did not know 
that cotton was an American crop. 

These new forces, the back country farmers, the fron- 
tiersmen, and the new race of upland cotton planters, 
together with the household manufacturers, made up the 
elements that overthrew the Federal forces. 

Owing to the confusion of interests, the presidential 
election was extremely close, so close that no one re- 
ceived a majority of the electoral votes. The election, 
therefore, went to the House of Representatives, where 
Thomas Jefferson was chosen as President, with Aaron 
Burr as Vice President. This result was not accom- 
plished without some political intrigue on the part of 
Hamilton and Aaron Burr, in which a new force was in- 
troduced into American politics by the latter. This 
was the famous Tammany Society of New York which 
had been founded as a social and philanthropic society 
in 1789. 1 

Before the Federalists lost control, they took one more 
long step in the perfection of the program of centraliza- 
tion and removal of the government from democratic 
control. They had formulated the constitution in secret, 
secured its adoption by deceit and gerrymandering, 
extended its provisions by shrewd legislation, and made 
it clearly an instrument of class government. The next 
step was to remove the final power of control from the 
people and vest it in the courts. The first move toward 
the accomplishment of this was a series of laws passed 
during the very last days of Federal rule, increasing the 

1 M. Ostrogorski, "Democracy and the Organization of Political 
Parties," Vol. II, pp. 150-153. 



126 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

number of courts far beyond the needs of the country at 
the time. Every place thus created was at once filled 
with a stanch Federalist. Tradition says that the work 
of signing the commissions of these judges was stopped 
only when a messenger from Jefferson stayed the hand 
of the secretary at midnight, March 3d. 

Having thus erected a supreme power beyond the reach 
of the people, they placed at the head of the judiciary 
a man who was to carry this usurpation of power to the 
uttermost limits and to fix it there for a century to come. 
This man was John Marshall, who occupied the position 
of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for thirty-four years, 
receiving his appointment in 1801. During this time he 
constantly extended and strengthened the power of his 
office until it reached proportions undreamed of even 
by those who founded this government, with the possible 
exception of Hamilton. 1 

Lest it may be thought that I exaggerate the extent of 
the revolutionary usurpation of power by Marshall and 
its influence on subsequent history, I will quote from 
an authoritative legal work at this point. Joseph P. 
Cotton, in his " Constitutional Decisions of John Mar- 
shall," says : — 

"In 1 80 1 one of these 1 midnight judges/ Marbury, 
applied for a mandamus to require the issue of his com- 
mission, and in 1803 Marshall delivered his opinion on 
that application. This opinion is the beginning of 
American constitutional law. In it Marshall announced 

1 The Federalist, No. LXXX, "Extent of the Authority of the Judi- 
ciary," by Hamilton, contains a passage that may possibly be under- 
stood to imply the existence of such power, but this is doubtful, and it 
is certain that no one claimed it openly at the time of the adoption of 
the constitution. 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 127 

the right of the Supreme Court to review the constitu- 
tionality of the acts of the national legislature and the 
executive, the coordinate branches of the government. 
Such a power had been spoken of in certain opinions, and, 
indeed, acted upon in unimportant cases in the state 
courts, but never in the Federal courts. Common as 
this conception of our courts now is, it is hard to com- 
prehend the amazing quality of it then. No court in 
England had such power ; there was no express warrant 
for it in the words of the Constitution ; the existence of 
it was denied by every other branch of the government 
and by the dominant majority of the country. More- 
over, no such power had been clearly anticipated by the 
framers of the Constitution, nor was it a necessary im- 
plication from the scheme of government they had es- 
tablished. If that doctrine were to be law, the Supreme 
Court was indeed a final power in a democracy, beyond 
the reach of public opinion." 

This completed the process of usurpation of power and 
destruction of democratic control which was begun with 
the first arrangements for a constitutional convention. 
With this power to declare laws unconstitutional in its 
possession the Supreme Court possessed an absolute veto 
on all legislation and was itself out of the reach of the 
voters. 

Jefferson, the representative of Southern plantation and 
frontier farmer interests, has always been hailed as the 
prophet of democracy. But his democracy, in accordance 
with the interests he represented, was that of individual- 
ism, of philosophic anarchy, rather than of associated 
effort under common management. The cotton plan- 
tation owner, whose working class of chattel slaves was 



128 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

forever debarred from political activity, could easily 
champion this democracy. He would enfranchise the 
Northern wage workers whom he hoped, and rightly, as 
subsequent events showed, might become his allies 
against the Northern merchants and manufacturers. 
The pioneer was always democratic in this individualistic 
sense. Class distinctions had not yet arisen on the fron- 
tier. Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, which were ad- 
mitted to the Union during this period, were the first 
states to embody universal suffrage in their constitutions. 

This alliance between planter and frontiersman is the 
key to the political policy of much of this period. This 
alliance was easier at this time than at any later period. 
Western emigration was largely from the Southern states. 
The great stream of peoples was flowing from Virginia 
and the Carolinas through the Cumberland Gap into 
Kentucky and Tennessee. The South saw in this move- 
ment an extension of its power into the future as well as 
geographically. 

Much of the work of Jefferson was connected with the 
West. He had been active in formulating the Ordinance 
of 1787'for the government of the Northwest Territory 
during the dying days of the Confederation, and his in- 
terest in the Western movement had always been close. 
He devised the system of land survey by townships, 
ranges, and sections, that has done so much to make 
American real estate more thoroughly a commodity than 
the land of any other country. He bought Louisiana, sent 
Lewis and Clark, and Pike to explore the Far West, and 
began the famous Cumberland Road as a part of an ex- 
tensive system of internal improvements. During this 
period Congress was always willing to appropriate money 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 



129 



for the settlement of Indian claims, or for the defense of 
the frontier in Indian wars. 

To all these measures the New England commercial 
interests were hostile. To a certain extent this was a 
result of sectional isolation as well as material interests. 
New England had developed a most intense sectional 
life, with its own customs, prejudices, dialects, religion, 
and local patriotism, and because of the intensive char- 
acter of these ideas and institutions, was to impress them 
deeply upon large sections of the country. 

Such isolation and concentration of thought and in- 
terests and policy were bound to become separatist when 
they were antagonized. When the Federalists under 
Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Laws, Kentucky and 
Virginia passed resolutions hinting at secession. Now 
the South and West were in control, with Virginia domi- 
nant, and it was the turn of New England, with Massa- 
chusetts at the head, to become " treasonable." For 
several years this section was openly to advocate and 
secretly to plot secession until another turn in industrial 
development should give New England interests the 
ruling hand, when the doctrine of secession would once 
more take up its abode in the South. 1 

It was the purchase of Louisiana that particularly 
aggravated the New England states. This was an appli- 
cation of their own philosophy in regard to the constitu- 
tion. There was no provision in that instrument for 

1 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. Ill, 
pp. 42-48; Wilson, "A History of the American People," Vol. Ill, 
p. 184; Hildrith, "History of the United States," Vol. V, p. 584; Von 
Hoist, "Constitutional History of the United States," Vol. I, pp. 185- 
186. 

E 



130 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

the purchase of new territory, and no Federalist had 
ever given as " liberal construction" to a constitutional 
question as did Jefferson when he purchased Louisiana, 
and provided for its government directly from the 
national capital without the consent of the inhabitants, 
and with little more than a notification to Congress. 

However discontented New England might be, it could 
not be denied that her merchants were prosperous. The 
high tide of American commerce was reached in 18 10 with 
a total tonnage of 1,424,783 tons. New England ships 
were in every harbor. The Oriental trade had become 
especially profitable. The road to India was at last 
running through America, though not exactly as Colum- 
bus had dreamed. 

With the beginnings of a factory system and the rise 
of a body of wageworkers there appear traces of organized 
labor and a struggle between employers and employees. 
The petitions to Congress for higher tariff and for relief 
and assistance for various industries all complain of the 
high wages which must be paid. Such a complaint 
indicates several things in addition to the political im- 
potence of the wageworkers. It is a fairly sure sign that 
wages were rising, rather than that they were already 
high. McMaster concludes from his investigations that, 1 

"The rates of wages were different in each of the three 
great belts along which population was streaming west- 
ward. The highest rates were paid in the New England 
belt, which stretched across the country from Massachu- 
setts to Ohio. The lowest rates prevailed in the southern 
belt, which extended from the Carolinas to Louisiana. 

1 "History of the People of the United States," Vol. Ill, pp. 509-515, 
is a good survey of labor conditions. 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 131 



In each of these bands again wages were lowest on the 
Atlantic seaboard, and, increasing rapidly in a western 
direction, were greatest in the Mississippi Valley." 

A contemporary authority furnishes an estimate of the 
wages paid at this time in the most northern belt, where 
they were supposed to be the highest. His figures are 
as follows : 1 — 

1774 1804 1807 1809 

Wages per day ... . $.50 $.75 $.75 $.80 
Wheat per bushel ... .65 1.55 1.55 1.00 

These wages were certainly not high enough to seem 
to require any action on the part of Congress to enable 
the employers to pay them. The figures for the last two 
years given above confirm the general impression that 
wages were rising at this time. Skilled workmen were 
beginning to organize unions, and here and there strikes 
took place. 

Strikes and unions were still illegal. When the cord- 
wainers (a branch of the shoemaking trade) went out on 
strike in Philadelphia in 1805, they were convicted of 
conspiracy and fined, after which they opened up a shop 
of their own and appealed to the public for patronage. 

In New York the growth of a wageworking class was 

1 Niks' Register, Vol. I, p. 79 (quoting from Blodget's "Economics"; 
McMaster, in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXV, p. 22, says of 1800: "Sol- 
diers in the army received three dollars a month. Farm hands in New 
England were given $4 a month and found their own clothes. Unskilled 
laborers toiled twelve hours per day for fifty cents. Workmen on turn- 
pikes, then branching out in every direction, were housed in rude sheds, 
fed coarse food, and given $4 a month from November to May and 
$6 from May to November. When the road from Genesee River to 
Buffalo was under construction in 181 2, though the region through which 
it went was frontier, men were hired in plenty for $12 per month in cash, 
and their board, lodging, and a daily allowance of whisky." 



132 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

having another effect. Here it was laying the foundations 
for democracy. During the time of the Revolution, the 
adoption of the constitution, and the Hamiltonian re- 
gime, the property qualifications for office and even for 
the suffrage were so high that the wageworking class 
was ignored by the politicians. Nor were the members 
of this class sufficiently numerous to make any effective 
protest against this disfranchisement. 1 

During the first decade of the nineteenth century, how- 
ever, a spirit of rebellion against these restrictions began 
to oe felt in New York. This first germ of a labor move- 
ment sought to widen the political powers as well as 
improve the industrial condition of its members. In 
New York some success was achieved in this direction, 
and at once there appeared that other phase of class rule 
under the form of democracy, — the political machine. 
Up to this time candidates had been nominated either 
by informal gatherings of " prominent citizens" or by 
caucuses of members of the state legislatures or Con- 
gress. 2 Now there were signs of so-called " popular" 
caucuses, and appeals began to be made to labor. 

On the whole, this was a period of the beginning of 
things that are familiar features of the society of three 
quarters of a century later. It was to be a generation, 
however, before any of these forces were to become 
prominent, social features. 

Jefferson went into office as the exponent of the idea 

1 "Memorial History of New York," Vol. Ill, pp. 13-14 ; McMaster, 
"History of the People of the United States," Vol. Ill, Chap. XVII; 
Niks' Register, Vol. I, pp. 80-81, contains table of electoral qualifica- 
tions in all states. 

2 Ostrogorski, " Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties," 
Vol. II, p. 12. 



RULE OF PLANTATION AND FRONTIER 133 



that the constitution should be " strictly construed," 
that the central government should be closely limited 
in its powers, and, above all, should never be used to 
serve sectional or class interests. Yet never was the 
constitution stretched farther than by the purchase of 
Louisiana and its government direct from the White 
House. The powers which the Federal government ex- 
ercised in the preliminary steps to the War of 181 2, when 
an embargo was laid on all commerce and Federal offi- 
cers were given the right of search and seizure, exceeded 
anything done by Hamilton. The fact that the pos- 
session of centralized power led Jefferson to use and ex- 
tend that power in the interest of those to whom he owed 
his election, is noted by nearly all historians. Although 
he came into office talking of the " revolution" due to 
his election, yet, 

"The great mass of the men, who in 1800 voted for 
Adams, could in 1804 see no reason whatever for voting 
against Jefferson. Scarcely a Federal institution was 
missed. They saw the debt, the bank, the navy, still 
preserved ; they saw a broad construction of the consti- 
tution, a strong government exercising the rights of sov- 
ereignty, paying small regard to the rights of States, and 
growing more and more national day by day, and they 
gave it a hearty support, as a government administered 
on the principles for which, ever since the constitution 
was in force, they had contended." 1 

1 McMaster, loc. cit., Vol. Ill, p. 198. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE WESTWARD MARCH OF A PEOPLE 

It has been noted that with Jefferson a new political 
force first made itself felt in national politics. This was 
the frontier. This ever moving frontier has been the one 
distinctive feature of American society. A full under- 
standing of its influence unlocks many a difficult problem 
in that history. 

He who would write the history of Greece, Italy, or 
England has but to describe the life of a body of people 
occupying a peninsula in the Mediterranean, or an island 
on the edge of the Atlantic. The scene of his story is 
fixed. But the history of the United States is the de- 
scription of the march of a mighty army moving westward 
in conquest of forest and prairie. 

The inundating ocean of population was held for a 
moment by the great Alleghenian dam. At the period we 
have been considering, it had just sought out the low 
places and the unguarded ends and was flowing through 
and around that dam. Along the buffalo paths, the 
Indian trails, and down the open rivers it was flowing into 
the great Mississippi Valley. As it flowed it widened 
the forest trails for the pack trains, and graded them for 
turnpikes, and finally leveled the hills and spanned the 
rivers with bridges on which to lay the iron track of the 
locomotive. 

134 



THE WESTWARD MARCH OF A PEOPLE 



This army had its scouts, its advance guard, its sap- 
pers and miners, its army of occupation. These various 
battalions reproduced in turn the various social stages 
through which the race has passed. Biology has taught 
us that the embryo reproduces in syncopated form the 
various steps in the evolution of living organisms. The 
ethnologists and the pedagogue know that in the same 
manner the child moves through mental stages much like 
those along which the race has traveled. In the same 
manner the successive stages of settlement in the march 
of America's army of pioneers tells again the story of 
social evolution. 

The advance guard of hunters, trappers, fishermen, 
scouts, and Indian fighters reproduced with remarkable 
fidelity the social stage of savagery. They lived in rude 
shelters built of logs or of prairie sod, found their food 
and clothing by the chase, gathered around personal 
leaders, were often lawless, brutal, and quarrelsome, 
though frequently they displayed the even more charac- 
teristically savage traits of taciturn silence and fatalistic 
courage. These men penetrated hundreds of miles into 
the wilderness ahead of all fixed settlements. They 
sometimes fraternized and lived with the Indians. Such 
were the French couriers du bois, who gathered furs from 
Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, exploring rivers that 
have found place upon the maps only within the last few 
decades. 

When these scouts had spied out the land the first 
body of the main army of conquest appeared. This was 
composed of the little groups of settlers who clustered 
along the watercourses and the main lines of advance. 

These settlements, drawn together for mutual defense 



136 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



against the Indians, the wild beasts, and the forest fires, 
and for mutual cooperation in house-raisings, husking, 
quilting, and logging "bees," with their "common" 
pastures in the surrounding forest and their democratic 
social and political organization, were so much like the 
Germanic "tuns" described by Tacitus, and the Anglo- 
Saxon villages of pre-Norman days, that one of the fore- 
most American historians gravely explains the resem- 
blance by the classical reading of New England Puritans. 

The people who formed this stage were migratory. No 
sooner had they carved out a little clearing in the wilder- 
ness than they moved on to take up the same task farther 
west. They too rallied around leaders, generally com- 
bined hunting and fishing with farming, and in every 
war in which the United States has been involved, save 
the latest, formed its most effective fighters. 1 

With this social stage came the beginnings of agricul- 
ture. It was a crude cultivation of the soil that borrowed 
its methods as well as its only important crop from the 
Indians. This crop, around which the agricultural life 
of large sections of the country has centered up to the 
present time, was Indian corn, or maize. This plant 
seems to have been especially evolved to meet the con- 
ditions of the American frontier. Without it another 

1 T. Roosevelt, "The Winning of the West," Vol. V, p. 128: "The 
men who settle in a new country and begin subduing the wilderness 
plunge back into the very conditions from which the race has raised 
itself by the slow toil of ages. The conditions cannot but tell upon them. 
Inevitably, and for more than one lifetime, . . . they tend to retrograde 
instead of advancing. They drop away from the standard which highly 
civilized nations have reached. As with harsh and dangerous labor 
they bring the new land up toward the level of the old, they themselves 
partly revert to their ancestral conditions; they sink back toward the 
state of their ages-dead barbarian forefathers." 



THE WESTWARD MARCH OF A PEOPLE 137 



generation or more would have been required for the ad- 
vancing army of settlement to have reached the Missis- 
sippi. 

It can be grown in the midst of the forest if the trees 
be "girdled" by removing a ring of bark, which causes 
the leaves to fall until the sunlight can filter through. 
A sharpened stake will do for a planting tool if nothing 
better is at hand. It will produce a considerable crop 
from virgin soil with little cultivation, and responds richly 
to added care. It grows rapidly, and its green ears furnish 
food early in the season. When ripe, it is easy of storage, 
is not injured by freezing, contains a great amount of 
nourishment in small bulk, and, what is perhaps most im- 
portant of all, can be most easily prepared for food. In 
no one of the various forms in which it entered into the 
dietary of the pioneer was any elaborate preparation re- 
quired. On a pinch an open fire to roast the green ears 
or the ripened kernels sufficed to satisfy hunger. It took 
the place of the pastures to which the colonists had been 
accustomed in Europe. As higher stages of agriculture 
were reached it became the foundation of the entire live- 
stock industry of the nation. 1 

Following this stage in the East, and preceding it in 
the West, where the Indians were held back by the regu- 

1 Roosevelt, "Winning of the West," Vol. I, pp. iio-m ; Massachu- 
setts Agricultural Report, 1853, p. 485; Stickney, "Use of Maize by- 
Wisconsin Indians," p. 71; Shaler, "The United States of America," 
Vol. I, pp. 26-27 ; Census of 1880, volume on "Agriculture," Part I, p. 135 ; 
J. H. Salisbury, "History and Chemical Investigation of Maize " ; Parkin- 
son, " Tour in North America," pp. 198-199 ; Drake, " Pioneer Life in Ken- 
tucky," pp. 47-57; Michaux, "Travels," etc., Chap. XII. These are 
some of the works discussing the importance of corn in this stage of 
American history and describing the methods by which it was cultivated 
and prepared for consumption. 



138 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



lar army and not driven out by the frontiersmen, came 
a third division composed of the cowboys, herdsmen, 
ranchmen, as they were variously called. Here we find 
a reproduction of many features of the nomadic stage of 
social evolution. When the race passed through this 
period, the large social unit which the care of the herds 
demands was supplied by the patriarchal family so famil- 
iar in the pages of the Old Testament. In America the 
rancher with his force of cowboys, cooks, etc., formed a 
very similar self-supporting unit. We are accustomed 
to think of this stage as having been confined to the sec- 
ond half of the nineteenth century and the Great Plains 
region. 

Like the other social stages, however, it has traveled 
across the continent. It existed wherever abundant 
pasture could be found, not yet divided into farms, and 
not too far from a market to permit the driving of the 
cattle to the place of slaughter. This stage was found 
prior to the Revolution in the Carolinas and Virginia, on 
the eastern slope of the Alleghenies. 1 It came over the 

1 John H. Logan, "History of the Upper Country of South Carolina," 
speaking of prerevolutionary times, says (pp. 1 51-15 2) : "Not far from 
the log hut of the hunter stood that of the cow-driver. . . . The 
business of stock-raising at this time on the frontier was scarcely less 
profitable than it is at present (1859) in similar regions of the West. 
. . . Having selected a tract where cane and pea-vines grew most 
luxuriantly, they erected in the midst of it temporary cabins and spa- 
cious pens. These were used as inclosures in which to collect the cattle 
at proper seasons , for the purpose of counting and branding them ; and 
from many such places in the upper country, vast numbers of beeves 
were annually driven to the distant markets of Charleston, Philadelphia, 
and even New York. . . . These rude establishments became after- 
wards, wherever they were formed, the great centers of settlements 
founded by the cultivators of the soil, who followed just behind the cow- 
drivers in their enterprising search for unappropriated productive lands." 



THE WESTWARD MARCH OF A PEOPLE 139 

mountains behind the hunters, trappers, and conquerors 
of the wilderness and flourished in the wild pea pastures 
along the Ohio. By 1830 this stage was reached on the 
prairies of Illinois; a decade later it had crossed the 
Mississippi, where it was to reach its final spectacular 
efflorescence on the Great Plains at the foot of the 
Rockies. 

Following the ranch came the small farmer, permanent 
towns, manufacturing, and the general features of the 
small, competitive system. From here on to the present 
the course of evolution will be considered under other 
heads. 

Within each of these stages, and more especially the 
latter, there have been minor divisions that have moved 
across the country within the general army at approx- 
imately the same rate of speed. Some of these divisions 
have never occupied certain sections. Changes in meth- 
ods of transportation have fundamentally altered the 
whole order of progress of the army. Yet in spite of these 
deviations from the ideal simplicity that has been 
sketched, the mighty fact of these onward marching 
battalions of society is the dominant feature of Amer- 
ican history, without a grasp of which that history is an 
almost unintelligible maze. 

When we speak of the " frontier," therefore, it is neces- 
sary that we say which frontier is meant, for the ad- 
vancing crest of each of these waves has been the frontier 
for that social stage. The word is most frequently 
applied to the stage in which the wilderness was cleared, 
the prairie sod broken, and the land made fit for agricul- 
ture. As it is used henceforth in this work, unless other- 
wise defined, it will be applied to that whole series of 



140 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



frontiers up to the time of the coming of small industries 
and competitive capitalism. 

While the frontier existed, this was the only country 
in the world that for many generations permitted its 
inhabitants to choose in which of the historic stages of 
social evolution they would live. The competition- 
crushed, unemployed, or black-listed worker of cap- 
italism moved west into the small, competitive stage 
with its greater opportunities for self-employment or 
for " rising." He could move onward geographically 
and backward historically to the semicommunistic stage 
of the first permanent settlers who would help him raise 
his log cabin and clear the ground for his first crop of corn. 
If he felt himself hemmed in by even the slight restric- 
tions of this stage, he could shoulder his rifle and revert to 
the wilderness and savagery. 

The frontier has been the great amalgamating force 
in American life. It took the European and in a single 
lifetime sent him through the racial evolution of a hun- 
dred generations. When he had finished, the few pecul- 
iar customs he had brought from a single country were 
gone, and he was that peculiarly twentieth century 
product, — the typical American. Only since the fron- 
tier has disappeared have great colonies grown up in 
which all the national peculiarities of those who compose 
them are accentuated by the internal resistance to the 
seemingly hostile territory about them. 

Those individuals who are most commonly instanced 
as distinctively American are largely born of the fron- 
tier and have passed through its successive stages. 

The frontier has given rise to the only race of hereditary 
rebels in history. One strange feature of this westward 



THE WESTWARD MARCH OF A PEOPLE 141 

march has been the remarkable tendency of the same 
families to remain continuously in the same social stage, 
moving westward as the succeeding stage encroached 
upon the one they had chosen. The fathers of those who 
settled on the Great Plains and in the valleys of the 
Cordilleras lived in the states of the Mississippi Valley, 
and their grandparents conquered the forests in Ohio, 
Kentucky, and Tennessee, while the preceding genera- 
tion had its home in western New York, Pennsylvania, 
or Virginia. 

This pioneer race had large families, a high death- 
rate, but a far higher birthright. It has been pointed 
out that this applied the principle of natural selection in 
a most pitiless and effective manner. 1 It produced a race 
physically large and strong, mentally alert, and socially 
rebellious. It is a race willing to try social experiments. 
The man who within his own lifetime has seen the whole 
process of social evolution going on under his eyes is 
not a believer in the unchangeableness of social institu- 
tions. 

These social stages have not existed side by side with- 
out friction. Each has desired to use the government 
to further its interests. In this conflict of interest is 
found an explanation of many political struggles. It 
was such a clash of interests that made itself felt in the 
fight over the constitution. It was a factor in the elec- 
tion of Jefferson. It appears again and again throughout 
American history. 

In many respects the description of the frontier and 
its progress which has been given here applies only to 
the non-slaveholding states. While slavery existed it 
1 Doyle, "English Colonies in America," Vol. II, p. 56. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



changed the method of westward advance in the South 
fundamentally. The struggle of these two methods of 
westward movement culminated in the Civil War, and 
it was the battle for the frontier that brought the slavery- 
question to a climax. 

These various general features of the frontier movement 
are brought together in this chapter, not in order to treat 
them in full, but in order to emphasize this highly sig- 
nificant phase of American history and make more com- 
prehensible a whole series of questions which must ap- 
pear in the consideration of that history. 1 

1 F. J.Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," 
is by far the best discussion of this phase of American history. See also 
Semple, "American History and its Geographic Conditions," Chap. IV ; 
and Gannet, "The Building of a Nation," p. 39 et seq. 



I 



CHAPTER XIII 



THE BIRTH OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM 

So far as battles, campaigns, glorious victories, great 
diplomacy, and other similar paraphernalia with which 
some historians are mainly concerned, the War of 1812 
was insignificant. While jingos boast of "how we licked 
the Britishers," and it occupies much space in our school 
histories, yet in a wider and more accurate vision this 
war is seen to be but a small incident in the great world 
war in which Napoleon was the central figure. Among 
the many nicknames that have been applied to this con- 
flict is "The War of Paradoxes." It was waged in de- 
fense of maritime interests, but the merchant states 
threatened to secede to stop it„ The alleged cause of the 
war (the English "Orders in Council") was repealed 
before war was declared. The most important battle of 
the war (New Orleans) was fought after the treaty of 
peace had been signed, and the original subject of dis- 
pute (impressment of seamen) was never mentioned in 
the treaty of peace. Finally, the New England states 
that were so eager for peace were ruined by its coming, 
and the South that desired war found its prosperity in 
peace. 

Although many generations of children have been 
taught that this war was a series of "glorious victories," 
respect for truth compels the statement that the United 
States was whipped in nearly every campaign, that the 

143 



144 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

capitol was burned, the coast closely blockaded through- 
out the war, and in spite of all the stories of how "we 
humbled the mistress of the seas," the American navy 
was practically wiped out of existence. 

The story of the origin of the war explains some of these 
contradictions. England was battling with Napoleon 
for the mastery of Europe and of the world. She was 
victorious on the seas, and was depending upon that com- 
mercial supremacy for resources with which to fight. In 
this titanic conflict both sides were determined that there 
should be no neutrals. They could not well make any 
other decision. The war was so much for commercial 
supremacy that to admit the existence of a neutral was 
to give that neutral control of the object for which the 
struggle was waged. 

Napoleon had declared a blockade of England, and 
England had blockaded nearly all of Europe to ships 
that had not first cleared from a British port. Napoleon 
in turn had declared that all ships that did so clear were 
contraband of war. The result of these " Orders in 
Council" and " Berlin and Milan Decrees" was that Eng- 
lish and French ships preyed upon the commerce of the 
United States. In spite of this fact, American commerce 
grew in a most startling manner, until a few New Eng- 
land states were carrying almost one third of the com- 
merce of the world. 

In her effort to secure sailors to man the gigantic navy 
required by the Napoleonic wars, England was in the 
habit of stopping merchant vessels of the United States 
and impressing such members of their crews as she desired, 
with the excuse that they were British deserters. To be 
sure a large percentage of the men so seized were deserters 



THE BIRTH OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM 145 



from the British navy. The great profits of American 
commerce enabled the shipowners to pay such wages 
that every British warship anchoring in American waters 
lost a good portion of its crew. 

The plantation interests represented by Jefferson had 
little understanding or sympathy with the New England 
merchants. Jefferson was inclined to temporize and 
experiment. At first the New England merchants were 
belligerent in their talk and petitions to Congress, but 
they soon discovered that more money could be made 
running blockades than in a domestic war, and became 
the strongest opponents of all retaliatory measures. 

The cotton planters, on the other hand, were anxious 
for war, or at least for some sort of reprisals directed 
against England. 1 They were selling their cotton to 
that country. The price was low, and the old antag- 
onism between buyer and seller was being felt. This an- 
tagonism, however, was not sufficiently sharp to lead to 
war. It led rather to a series of peculiar legislative acts 
based upon the idea that a country could be punished by 
withholding commerce. The result of this attitude was 
the passage of the " Embargo" and the "Noninter- 
course" acts. 

These measures were based upon the idea that the 
trade of a country is a sort of isolated entity that can be 
withheld and granted or directed wherever and when- 
ever such action is desired. By withholding the Ameri- 
can trade Jefferson thought to punish England. The 
" Embargo" forbade American ships to leave their har- 
bors save for coast trade. Since a large proportion of 

1 U. B. Phillips, "Georgia and State Rights," in Annual Report 
of American Historical Association, 1001, Vol. II, pp. 99-100. 

L 



146 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



American histories have been written by persons with 
New England prejudices, these histories nearly all de- 
clare the " Embargo" to have been a terrible failure. In 
truth it paralyzed many branches of British industry, 
sent the price of flour to $19 a barrel in England, caused 
great petitions to be sent to Parliament begging for relief, 
and, finally, actually accomplished the object for which it 
was laid, — secured the repeal of the " Orders in Council," 
even though the news of that repeal came too late to 
avert war. 1 

During the war the New England merchants carried 
their opposition to the farthest point possible without 
taking up actual hostilities against the national govern- 
ment. They advocated secession, refused to subscribe 
to the national loan, encouraged their militia to rebel 
against orders of the national government, sent large 
sums of specie to Canada for British drafts, supplied 
food to the British armies and ships, and in general did 
everything that would bring a profit and injure the 
national government. 2 

This war has also been called "The Second War for 
Independence." There is more than a little justice in 
the name. But that independence was not gained at 
Lundy's Lane, or New Orleans, by Perry on Lake Erie 
or by the victory of the Constitution over the Guerriere. 
That independence came through developments in a 
wholly different field. It was a result of the industrial 
transformation wrought by the war. 

1 McMaster, " History of the People of the United States," Vol. IV, 
pp. 1-2. 

2 Babcock, "Rise of American Nationality," pp. 156-158; Dewey, 
"Financial History of the United States," p. 133. 



THE BIRTH OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM 147 

The most important event of the period was the birth 
of a royal heir, the last of the long line of ruling classes 
that have dominated society since the appearance of 
private property. This last prince of the line of class 
rule was the machine-owning capitalist class. The 
United States census of 1900 is authority for the state- 
ment that "the factory system obtained its first foothold 
in the United States during the period of the Embargo 
and the War of 181 2." To be sure, this same authority 
assures us that, 

"The manufacture of cotton and wool passed rapidly 
from the household to the mill, but the methods of do- 
mestic and neighborhood industry continued to pre- 
dominate, even in these industries down to, and includ- 
ing, the decade between 1820 and 1830 ; and it was not 
until about 1840 that the factory method of manufacture 
extended itself widely to miscellaneous industries, and 
began rapidly to force from the market the handmade 
commodities with which every community had hitherto 
supplied itself." 

In spite of the fact that the factory industry had been 
struggling for a foothold since the beginning of the cen- 
tury, and that much boasting had been made of the extent 
to which manufacturing was carried on, the opening of 
the war saw the country in such a dependent condition 
that the Secretary of the Interior begged that the Em- 
bargo be raised temporarily in order that the government 
might obtain the woolen blankets that were required in 
the Indian trade, since these could not be produced in 
the United States. 

Any war tends artificially to stimulate manufactures. 
The purchase of large quantities of uniform articles 



148 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

favors the factory rather than the household producer. 
Government specifications frequently provided that the 
goods must be of American manufacture. With no 
foreign competition, a limited number of domestic pro- 
ducers, and production inadequate to demand, factories 
yielded several hundred per cent profit. 

As had been the case in Europe, the mercantile cap- 
italists had accumulated the capital for the establishment 
of the factory system. Woodrow Wilson notes that, 
"The very shipowners of the trading ports had in many 
instances sold their craft and put their capital into the 
manufacture of such things as were most immediately 
needed for the home market." 1 

Another law of historical evolution is illustrated in the 
way that the rising social class found expression in the 
social consciousness. Every effort was made to encour- 
age manufactures. Societies were formed, premiums 
offered, bounties paid, tax exemptions granted, and every 
possible means for the fostering of manufactures was put 
into operation. 

The most strenuous efforts were made to entice for- 
eign artisans to America. All their effects were exempt 
from duty. Pennsylvania hastened to grant them es- 
pecial privileges of citizenship. Many legislatures passed 
resolutions pledging their members to wear only home- 
made goods. To encourage the woolen industry, bounties 
were offered for the importation of merino sheep, and 
Pennsylvania taxed dogs to raise money with which to 
import rams of this famous breed. 

1 "History of the American People," Vol. Ill, p. 240; D. B. Warden, 
"An Account of the United States of America" (1819), pp. 262-263; 
Matthew Carey, "New Olive Branch," Chap. V, 



THE BIRTH OF THE FACTORY SYSTEM 149 



Manufactures could not fail to flourish under such 
conditions. In the production of cotton there were 87 
mills in 181 1 operating 80,000 spindles and producing 
2,880,000 pounds of yarn, with 4000 employees. By 1815 
there were half a million spindles running, with 76,000 
employees, working up 27,000,000 pounds of raw cotton. 
The iron industry developed to the point where it lacked 
but 3000 tons of supplying the whole country. It is 
worthy of note that it now began to center around Pitts- 
burg. Earthenware, glass, cordage, and all manner of 
wooden ware manufactures shot up into prominence. 

The number of patents rapidly increased. The first 
complete mill for the production of cotton cloth was set 
up by Francis C. Lowell at Waltham, Massachusetts, 
in 181 5. Elkanah Cobb, of Vermont, invented a ma- 
chine for weaving blankets that did the work of several 
men. 

Soon the manufacturing capitalist began to develop 
even more clearly the outlines of a definite class con- 
sciousness. Niles 9 Weekly Register, the great organ 
of the manufacturers during the next forty years, was 
started in Baltimore, September, 181 1. From the begin- 
ning it was an active defender of protective tariffs. In 
i8i9we hear it voicing the jealousy of the manufacturers 
and shipowners for the favor of the national government. 

One of the memorials sent by the manufacturers to 
Congress at this time makes a suggestive complaint and 
explanation in these words : 1 — 

"The fostering care bestowed on commerce — the 
various statutes enacted in its favor — the expense 
incurred for that purpose — the complete protection 

1 Niks 7 Register, July 17, 1819, p. 351. 



150 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

it has experienced, form a most striking contrast with 
the situation of manufactures, and the sacrifice of those 
interested in them. . . . There is but one way to 
account for the care bestowed on the commercial and 
the neglect of the manufacturing interests. The former 
has at all times been well represented in Congress and 
the latter, never." 

The period immediately succeeding the war came 
near to strangling the infant manufacturing industry 
in the cradle. As had been the case at the close of the 
Revolution, European and especially British manu- 
facturers poured a flood of goods upon the American 
market. They could the more easily do this since the 
Napoleonic wars ended with the battle of Waterloo in 
181 5. But the whole fabric of American society was 
changing, and in that change the factory system was to 
find new strength and grow until it became the dominant 
factor in that society. 



CHAPTER XIV 



CHANGING INTERESTS 

In the twenty years immediately following the War 
of 1812 forces were evolving, institutions arising and 
changing, centers of social gravity shifting, and deep 
basic movements of various sorts taking place that have 
had the most lasting effects upon the whole structure 
of American life. 

It was essentially a time of realignment of interests, 
and of changes in social attitude. 

America had hitherto looked eastward across the 
Atlantic. Sometimes it looked with anger, but always 
with interest, and its problems were entangled with 
those of the older continent. Public questions turned 
on points located, in part at least, beyond the national 
boundaries. The dominant economic activity, aside 
from agriculture, had been commerce, and commerce 
is always concerned with external affairs. The in- 
dustrial, social, and political upheavals that had 
taken place in Europe during the early years of the 
American Republic were such as to attract attention. 
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars were 
dramas that compelled the attention of the world. 

After the War of 181 2 the American social mind 
became introspective. Henceforth it was not to be 
concerned primarily with treaties, commercial bounties, 

151 



152 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



impressment, embargoes, and matters of the open sea 
and distant lands, but with turnpikes and canals, tariffs 
and manufactures, public lands, currency, banks, crises, 
poverty, state sovereignty, and chattel slavery. 1 

It was not alone that commerce was declining and 
manufactures growing. The people themselves were 
leaving the seaboard and setting their faces toward the 
West. The dribbling streams of immigrants that had 
been pressing through the clefts in the Alleghenies now 
became a mighty flood that poured over and around these 
barriers and swept down upon the Mississippi Valley. 
Between 1815 and 1820 western Pennsylvania, with 
Kentucky, Tennessee, and southern Ohio and Indiana, 
were filled with a hustling population. 

During this period the people of the Ohio Valley 
reached the small farmer stage. Since each farm was 
a small household manufacturing establishment, and 
especially as the beginnings of the factory system were 
also apparent, this locality developed a protectionist 
sentiment. Its most pressing need, however, was for 
better transportation facilities. It is not surprising, 

1 Boston Yankee, Nov. 4, 18 19 : "The time appears to be fast ap- 
proaching when an important change must take place in the situation 
of the people of this country. The unexampled success of American 
commerce during the late troubled state of Europe appears to have fairly 
intoxicated the population of this country. Every newspaper from 
N. Orleans to Maine was loud in advocating the commercial policy; 
but the tranquillity of Europe has wrought such a change in the commer- 
cial world that the Americans begin to see and feel that it is not on com- 
merce alone they must depend. New evidence arises every day to prove 
that we cannot entirely be a commercial people. The prosperity of 
the U.S. is bottomed upon the success of agriculture and manufactures, 
which begin to excite interest in proportion to the decline of commerce. " 
See also McMaster, "A Century of Social Service," Atlantic Monthly, 
Vol. LXXIX, p. 23 ; F. J. Turner, Atlantic Monthly, Jan., 1903, p. 84. 



CHANGING INTERESTS 



153 



therefore, that Henry Clay, "the father of the American 
protective system" and the great champion of internal 
improvements, should have been sent to Congress from 
Kentucky during this period. 

The South was also undergoing an industrial transfor- 
mation. Here it was not the supplanting of one form 
of industry by another so much as the rise of a new crop 
that was working the change. The invention of the 
cotton gin had made the cultivation of upland cotton 
profitable, and as a consequence the competition of 
Western lands was ruining the agriculture of the sea- 
board. The " Virginia dynasty," composed of the Wash- 
ingtons, Madisons, Jeffersons, Randolphs, and others, 
whose families came across the Atlantic at the time of 
the Commonwealth in England, were being impoverished, 
and losing their industrial power, were being relegated 
to the rear politically. 

So complete was the industrial decline of Virginia that 
one observer declared that the larger plantations were 
nearly all plunging their owners deeper and deeper into 
debt. In 1830 John Randolph prophesied that the 
time was coming when the masters would run away 
from the slaves and be advertised for in the public 
papers. 1 It was during this period that Thomas Jeffer- 
son became so impoverished that public subscriptions 
were raised to relieve him and Congress purchased his 
library, a transaction from which sprung the present 
magnificent Congressional Library. 2 

It is not surprising that such an industrial condition 
should have given rise to considerable antislavery sen- 

1 Frederick J. Turner, "The Rise of the New West," p. 59. 

2 Thomas Watson, " Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson," p. 508. 



154 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

timent in Virginia. This sentiment was of short dura- 
tion. In another generation the upland cotton planters 
and the Louisiana sugar raisers were demanding slaves 
in such numbers that their production in Virginia became 
a profitable industry. 

In New England, although the old fishing and mer- 
cantile rulers were passing off the stage, many of the 
same families succeeded to the line of power by investing 
their capital in the rapidly growing manufactures. 

Until this period the merchants and the commercial 
interests, in alliance with the Southern planters, had 
controlled the national government. The manufac- 
turers who were struggling for influence in that govern- 
ment were quick to point out the extent to which the 
nation had used its machinery for the benefit of com- 
merce. Matthew Carey, the great spokesman of the 
manufacturing interests, places upon the title pages of 
his "Essays on Political Economy" a table comparing the 
treatment accorded to agriculture, commerce, and 
manufactures. In his "New Olive Branch" he points 
out that, 

"The second act passed by the first Congress contained 
clauses which secured to the tonnage of our merchants 
a monopoly of the whole China trade — and gave them 
paramount advantages in all other foreign trade. . . . 

"The same act gave our merchants an additional deci- 
sive advantage by allowing a discount of ten per cent 
on the duties upon goods imported in American vessels. 

"The tonnage duty upon vessels belonging to American 
citizens was fixed at six cents a ton; on American-built 
vessels, owned wholly or in part by foreigners, thirty 
cents ; and on all other foreign vessels, fifty cents. 



CHANGING INTERESTS 



155 



"In order to exclude foreign vessels from the coasting 
trade they were subjected to a tonnage duty of fifty 
cents per ton for every voyage ; whereas our vessels paid 
but six cents, and only once a year." 

The methods by which these favors for the mercantile 
interest were secured are very clearly understood by 
Carey, and he instances them as an example that must 
be followed by the manufacturers if they are to have the 
use of the government to defend their interests. 

"It is not difficult to account for this parental care," 
he tells us. "The mercantile interest was ably repre- 
sented in the first Congress. It made a judicious selec- 
tion of candidates, and carried the elections pretty gen- 
erally in the seaport towns. . . . The representation 
in Congress was divided almost wholly between farmers, 
planters, and merchants. The manufacturing interest 
was, I believe, unrepresented ; or, if it had a few repre- 
sentatives, they were not distinguished men, and had 
little or no influence. It shared the melancholy fate of 
all unrepresented bodies in all ages and all nations." 

As fond parents are prone to predict brilliant futures 
for each new-born infant, so at the time of the birth of 
the factory system the most extravagant blessings were 
expected from its development. Even the columns of 
the Annals of Congress break into peans of promise, 
singing of the blessings to be brought with the new 
machinery. In a report submitted by Tench Coxe in 
1814 he congratulates the workers of America on "the 
variety of ingenious mechanisms, processes, and devices, 
which, while they save labor, manifestly exempt them 
from the deleterious modes of the old manufacturing 
system." He proceeds in a strain that has a queer 



156 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



sound in the ears of those who have seen the effects 
actually produced by these machines: — 

" Women, relieved in a considerable degree from their 
former employments as carders, weavers, and fullers by 
hand, occasionally turn to the occupation of the weaver, 
with improved machinery and instruments, which abridge 
and soften the labor, while the male weavers employ 
themselves in superintendence, instruction, superior 
or other operations, and promote their health by occa- 
sional attention to gardening, agriculture, and the clear- 
ing and improvement of their farms. . . . These won- 
derful machines, working as if they were animated beings, 
endowed with all the talents of their inventors, laboring 
with organs that never tire, and subject to no expense 
of food, or bed, or raiment, or dwelling, may be justly 
considered as an equivalent to an immense body of 
manufacturing recruits enlisted in the service of the 
country." 1 

Unfortunately for this idyllic picture the machines 
became instruments of private profit in the hands of a 
class of non-workers who soon became a power in the 
national government, while those who operated these 
instruments were doomed to exploitation, and, to para- 
phrase the words of Matthew Carey, quoted above, 
"shared the melancholy fate of all unrepresented bodies 
in all ages and all nations." 

While the old ruling class in the South and in New 
England was being disrupted by the disintegration of 
its economic base, the new economic class of manufac- 
turers was gaining political power and influence. By 
1816 it was able to carry through Congress a tariff law 
1 Annals, 1814, Appendix, pp. 2601-2602. 



CHANGING INTERESTS 



157 



with fairly strong protective features. This measure 
was carried by the votes of the Middle and Western 
states, with some help from the South. The commercial 
interests of New England, led by Daniel Webster, a 
newcomer in Congress, offered the strongest opposition. 
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was a supporter 
of the tariff. Changing economic interests later reversed 
the positions of these two antagonists. 

The South still hoped that it might become the seat 
of manufactures, or at least that it would find in New 
England cotton factories a better market than abroad; 
while the fear of foreign competition in the raising of 
cotton led Southern planters to desire a market in which 
they might hope to have at least a great advantage. 1 

Louisiana was beginning to produce sugar, and the 
interests of the producers of this crop led her represen- 
tatives in Congress to join with the protectionists. 

The decline of New England commercial and Southern 
tobacco interests was transferring the center of power 
to the Middle and Western states. Pennsylvania was 
now becoming the " Keystone state" in more than loca- 
tion. Although it had not yet obtained the domination 
in manufacturing that it was later to possess, it was 
advancing toward that position. Its most strikingly 
strategic position at this time was due to its possession 
of the principal gateway to the West. Hostile Indians 
still occupied northern Ohio and Indiana, and the great 
highway of the Hudson, Mohawk, and Genesee rivers 
was not being used. 

1 Edward Stan wood, "American Tariff Controversies in the Nine- 
teenth Century," p. 106 ; C. K. Babcock, "The Rise of American Nation- 
ality," p. 160; Niks' Register, Vol. XXVI, p. 113. 



158 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The Ohio River was the main artery of trade and 
travel. Until after 1830 there was to be little settle- 
ment west of the Alleghenies that was not dependent 
upon this river. A map of population prior to that time 
shows few important settlements in that region border- 
ing on the Great Lakes that is now almost dominant in 
national life. The principal cities of the West were 
Cincinnati, Marietta, Louisville, and St. Louis. This 
trans-Allegheny empire had grown to great importance 
in American life. Its trade was determining the growth 
of seaboard states and cities and the direction of future 
national development. Three cities on the Atlantic 
coast were contending for the control of the Western 
trade. These were Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New 
York. The weapons with which cities fight for trade 
are usually improved systems of transportation. At 
this time inland transportation was by canals and turn- 
pikes. There was a perfect craze for the construction 
of these forms of trade highways. 1 New York was 
planning the Erie Canal. Baltimore had succeeded in 
inducing Congress to undertake the Cumberland Road, a 
great national highway to pass through Cumberland Gap, 
near Wheeling, West Virginia, and on into and across 
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. 2 Philadelphia was developing 
a system of internal canals with state help, to secure 
the advantage possessed by the fact that the principal 
gate for Western trade was already located at Pittsburg. 

1 For a description of the manner in which the War of 181 2, with the 
Embargo and blockade, had compelled the development of inland trans- - 
porta tion, and especially of trade by wagons, see McMaster, "History 
of the People of the United States," Vol. IV, pp. 218-221. 

2 1. L. Ringwalt, " Development of Transportation Systems in the 
United States," p. 21. 



CHANGING INTERESTS 



159 



There was still another contestant for the trade of 
this Western territory. New Orleans, with all the ad- 
vantage of a never ceasing river current flowing from 
the source of the trade past her doors, was the natural 
outlet for many of the products of this district. In 
181 1, by the launching of the first steamboat on Western 
waters at Pittsburg, the advantage of the current was 
largely lost, and the whole aspect of Western travel 
began to be transformed. 1 

One of the important sources of Western wealth during 
this period was the fur trade. The American Fur Com- 
pany, controlled by John Jacob Astor, was chartered in 
1808, and within a dozen years had become a power 
throughout the upper Mississippi Valley and even on the 
Pacific coast. The explorations of Lewis and Clark and 
Pike opened up rich fur territory, which was exploited 
until settlement invaded its sources a generation later. 

Owing to the difficulties of transportation, there was 
no strong national feeling. It was not alone New Eng- 
land that threatened to secede. The Mississippi Valley 
was filled with intrigue and with separatist sentiment. 
The ties that bound the interests of this locality with 
the Atlantic coast were few and tenuous, and were only 
tightened when the national government used its power 
to protect Western interests through internal improve- 
ments and a protective tariff, and later when the rail- 
road, steamship, and canal systems laid a firm basis for 
national unity. 

1 L. J. Bishop, "History of American Manufactures," Vol. II, p. 173 ; 
Timothy Flint, "Condensed Geography and History of the Western 
States," Vol. II, pp. 228-229. 



CHAPTER XV 



THE FIRST CRISIS — 1819 

The industrial boom created by the Embargo, the 
war, western land speculation, and the canal and turn- 
pike enthusiasm, and fostered by the tariff of 18 16 gave 
the infant capitalism severe internal pains, climaxing 
in the first crisis in 1819. 

There were as many explanations of the cause of this 
crisis as of any of the subsequent ones. Senator Thomas 
H. Benton was positive that it was caused by the new 
United States Bank, that had been chartered in 1816. 1 
Many others were sure it was caused by the tariff enacted 
in the same year. It was really but the American phase 
of an almost universal collapse of industry and finance 
following the readjustments attendant upon the close 
of the Napoleonic wars. Unfavorable weather in 
Europe had almost ruined the crops of 1816-1817 in 
England, France, and Italy, adding a catastrophe of 
nature to an industrial collapse. 2 

Within the United States the period immediately 
preceding the crisis had been one of feverish specula- 
tion. 3 Although there was still a vast quantity of 

1 Thomas H. Benton, "Thirty Years in the United States Senate," 
Introduction, pp. 5-6; William H. Gouge, "A Short History of Paper 
Money and Banking in the United States," pp. 33-35. 

2 H. De Gibbins, "Economic and Industrial Progress Century," in 
Nineteenth Century Series, Vol. XV, pp. 108-109. 

3 Niks' Register, June 12, 181 9, p. 257. 

160 



THE FIRST CRISIS — 1819 



161 



"no-rent" land, 1 there had been a wild struggle to secure 
possession of western lands, with all the attendant phe- 
nomena of excessively high prices, fraudulent purchases 
and manipulation that became so familiar in later years. 2 

The new manufactures also offered a favorable ground 
for speculation. Joint stock companies, as corporations 
were still called, had been organized in great numbers, 
and their stock floated upon the first battalion of that 
immense army of " innocent purchasers" who have been 
absorbing similar issues ever since. These same trusting 
individuals were given an opportunity to absorb a large 
quantity of stock in canal and turnpike companies, 
many of which went bankrupt during the ensuing crisis. 

The whole situation was greatly aggravated by a 
state of financial chaos. The charter of the first Bank 
of the United States, the one championed by Hamilton, 
had expired in 181 1. At once a multitude of private and 
state banks sprung up. Frequently the principal asset 
of these banks consisted of a set of plates from which 
to print paper money. This money was loaned to 

1 Warden, "Statistical, Political, and Historical Account of the 
United States" (1819), Introduction, p. xliv : "Rent exists in a very 
limited degree in the United States. . . . Except in the immediate 
neighborhood of great towns, there is very little land let at lease in the 
United States, the price being so low that any person who has the capital 
necessary to enter upon the business of farming finds the purchase money 
of the land a very small addition to his outlay." 

2 C. F. Emerick, " The Credit System and the Public Domain," p. 6 
et seq. "The year 1814 witnessed the beginning of a great increase in 
the sales of public lands. In that year 864,536 acres were sold, or 
245,370 more than in any year since 1796. During the succeeding five 
years the sales assumed vast proportions, in 1819 reaching 5,475,648 
acres. These figures were not surpassed until 1835." Flint, "Geog- 
raphy and History of Western States," pp. 348-350. 

M 



1 62 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



prospective purchasers of land, the bank being secured 
by a mortgage on the land. 

Capitalism, scarcely in existence, could hardly be 
expected to evolve any effective system of banking. It 
fell back upon individual initiative, and turned over the 
function of printing money to whatever band of clever 
men might get together and secure the easily obtained 
sanction of some state government. The Constitution 
forbids any state to "emit bills of credit," but by some 
strange twisting of this phrase it was held that the states 
were free to confer this right upon individuals. It would 
be impossible to exaggerate the carnival of swindling 
that followed. Nearly every legislature was besieged 
with applicants for bank charters, and those best able 
to influence such legislation were granted practically 
unlimited power to print and circulate money. 

Any sudden shock would tumble such a house of cards 
about the heads of its builders. The shock came when 
the second Bank of the United States sought to force 
the restoration of specie payments that had been sus- 
pended during the war. This second bank, unlike the 
first one, was owned largely outside of New England. 1 
For the moment the Middle states, with their growing 
manufactures, and the Southern states, with a profitable 
cotton crop, were more prosperous, more directly inter- 
ested in and favored by the national government, and 
therefore, more patriotic than the decaying commercial 
states of New England. 

Once more a note should be made of the attitude of 
three men. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina opened 

1 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. IV, 
PP. 3I3-3I4. 



THE FIRST CRISIS — 1819 



163 



the debate in Congress in support of the bank. In this 
he was strongly assisted by Henry Clay of Kentucky, 
then Speaker of the House of Representatives. The 
great opponent of the bill was Daniel Webster of Massa- 
chusetts. 1 Each of these men reflected a sectional 
economic interest in this position. As those interests 
changed, the beliefs and political principles of these 
men veered to suit the changing wind. 

The earliest beginnings of this bank, that was to be 
such an important factor in the financial, industrial, 
and political life of this country, were tainted with fraud. 
The provisions for a paid-in capital, which had been a 
part of the law creating it, were evaded. The first 
subscribers were allowed to borrow money upon their 
stock with which to purchase more stock, and so on until 
a most unsteady pyramid was built with no genuine 
assets at bottom. 2 The operations of the bank were 
then manipulated to the benefit of the board of directors 
and stockholders. Among the latter, it was alleged by 
Niles, who was by no means an enemy of the bank, 
were forty members of Congress. 3 

The scandals were so great that a Congressional com- 
mittee was appointed to investigate the bank, and when 
this committee reported, January 16, 1819, the bank 
stock fell from near 140 (at which point it had been 
accepted as collateral for loans up to almost its full 
market value) to 93 . 4 Yet the report was largely a 
whitewash, and its main effect was to frighten the presi- 
dent of the bank into fleeing from the country. Three 

1 McMaster, loc cit., Vol. IV, pp. 310-311. 

2 Wm. H. Gouge, "History of Paper Money and Banking," p. 27. 

3 Niks' Register, Feb. 27, 1819. 4 Gouge, loc. cit., p. 30. 



164 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



years later a report was forced from the institution that 
showed that it was absolutely bankrupt at the time of 
the Congressional investigation, and that it had been 
guilty of nearly all the acts of crooked finance that such 
a still unsophisticated age knew. 1 

Immediately after the Congressional investigation 
and the flight of the president, a new administration 
realized that only the most drastic steps would save the 
institution from actually going through bankruptcy 
proceedings, with the probable criminal prosecution of 
its officials. There was an immediate restriction of 
credits, a sudden demand for collections, and an insist- 
ence upon specie payments from other banks. 

When the Bank of the United States refused to accept 
the notes of the insolvent state banks, the latter promptly 
failed, their securities fell into the hands of the national 
institution, and the tens of thousands of debtors who had 
borrowed this money for land speculation and other 
purposes had their property taken away by foreclosure 
of mortgages. 2 

At once a great "Populistic" movement swept over 
Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio. The 
legislature of Kentucky established a state bank, with 
little more than wind for assets, and declared war upon 
the Bank of the United States. Maryland, Tennessee, 
Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio, all 
endeavored to tax the branches of the Bank of the 
United States. But John Marshall was Chief Justice 
of the Supreme Court, and in the famous case of Mc- 
Cullough vs. Maryland the right of the state to tax the 

1 Gouge, loc. cit., p. 31. 

2 F. J. Turner, "Rise of the New West," pp. 126-127. 



THE FIRST CRISIS — 1819 



bank was denied. But the frontier cared little for Su- 
preme Court decisions, and Ohio proceeded to flaunt the 
decision and to collect the tax by force of arms, while 
Kentucky withdrew the protection of state laws from 
the branches located in that state. 1 

The revolt of the West was not surprising. The bank 
had obtained possession through mortgages of vast 
tracts of land, both urban and rural. The sufifering 
everywhere was intense. 

Thomas H. Benton introduces his " Thirty Years' 
View" with this striking description of the situation in 
1820: — 

" The years 181 9 and 1820 were a period of gloom and 
agony. No money, either gold or silver : no paper 
convertible into specie : no measure or standard of 
v°lue left remaining. The local banks (all but those of 
New England), after a brief resumption of specie pay- 
ments, again sank into a state of suspension. The Bank 
of the United States, created as a remedy for all these 
evils, now at the head of the evil, prostrate and helpless, 
with no power left but that of suing its debtors, and 
selling their property, and purchasing it for itself at its 
own nominal price. No price for property or produce. 
No sales but those of the sheriff or marshal. No pur- 
chasers at the execution sales but the creditor or some 
hoarder of money. No employment for industry — 
no demand for labor — no sale for the produce of the 
farm — no sound of the hammer but that of the auc- 
tioneer knocking down property. Stop laws — property 

1 Frederick J. Turner, "The Rise of the New West," pp. 136-140, 
300; J. B. McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," 
Vol. IV, pp. 484-510; Horace White, "Money and Banking," p. 285. 



1 66 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTOR,Y 

laws — replevin laws — stay laws — loan office laws — 
the intervention of the legislator between the creditor 
and debtor : this was the business of legislation in three- 
fourths of the states of the Union — of all South and 
West of New England. No medium of exchange but 
depreciated paper: no change even, but little bits of 
foul paper, marked so many cents and signed by some 
tradesman, barber, or inn-keeper: exchanges deranged 
to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. Dis- 
tress the universal cry of the people : Relief the 
universal demand thundered at the doors of all legis- 
latures, State or Federal. " 1 

This process of wholesale exploitation by the bank 
was one of the steps by which the capital necessary to 
the establishment of the factory system was gathered 
from the multitude of small producers and brought 
together in the large sums needed for the introduction 
of this new industrial stage. 

In August, 1 8 19, Niks' Register said, " There are 
20,000 persons daily seeking work in Philadelphia — in 
New York 10,000 able-bodied men are said to be wander- 
ing the streets looking for it, and if we add to them the 
women who desire something to do, the amount cannot 
be less than 20,000 — in Baltimore there may be about 
10,000 persons in unsteady employment, or actually 
suffering because they cannot get into business." 

This panic seems to have marked the beginning of 
regular relief by charitable bodies. There had been 
plenty of misery before, but the whole population had 
been so closely knit together that charitable societies 

1 Thomas H. Benton, "Thirty Years in the United States Senate," 
p. 5- 



THE FIRST CRISIS — 1819 



167 



were seldom needed. In 181 5 Henry Niles, the editor 
and publisher of Niles' Register, estimated that there 
was one pauper for every 250 persons. He also states 
that no provision was made for any save for those who 
were disabled physically, except during a short time in 
the winter. 1 During the winter of 181 9- 1820 soup- 
houses were established in several of the larger cities. 
A little later a committee was appointed to investigate 
the public charities of Philadelphia, and its report reveals 
a mass of misery among the workers that foretells the 
city slum of to-day. 

While the national government was being used to 
collect the last farthing from the little farmers and half 
starving wageworkers, the same forces that were utiliz- 
ing that government for debt-collecting purposes were 
developing a bankruptcy code that should free the 
merchant, banker, manufacturer, and planter from such 
of his debts as he was unable to pay. The governors 
of Louisiana and Rhode Island urged the enactment of 
bankruptcy legislation in their annual messages in 181 6. 
Several states already had enacted such laws, although 
the national government had repealed the one enacted 
in 1800, after an existence of only three years. These 
laws were quickly taken advantage of, and Niles in 1819 
remarks that " Twenty or thirty years ago if a man failed 
for $100,000, people talked about it as something marvel- 
ous. But now," he adds, "it is not considered decent 
for a man to break for less than $100,000, and if a per- 
son would be thought a respectable bankrupt, he ought to 
owe two or three hundred thousand more." 

A New York judge before whom some of these bank- 
1 Niks' Register, IX, p. 232. 



168 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



ruptcy cases were brought expressed himself as horrified 
that people "from the class of society" that composed 
the bankrupts could commit such crimes. He added 
that he had "witnessed displays of depravity on the 
part of the agents of moneyed institutions of the most 
appalling character." 1 

The pressure of the panic created criminals at both 
ends of the social scale. A "Bank Director, " writing to 
the London Courier for May n, 1820, states that: 
"Mail robberies and piracies are quite the order of the 
day. Two men were hung at Baltimore a few months 
ago for robbing the mail : two more will experience the 
same fate in a few days at the same place for the same 
crime. Two men are to be hung there a week hence 
for piracy, and five others are under sentence of death." 2 

The reorganization following the panic accelerated the 
industrial tendencies and social readjustments already 
noted. By 1828 manufacturing had so dominated over 
commerce in Massachusetts that Webster announced 
that since the interests of his constituents had become 
bound up with protection, he had changed his mind and 
would now support the tariff. 

The whole set of social institutions changed to adjust 
themselves to this new industrial base. The old Federal- 
ist party died out in New England, once its stronghold. 3 
The religious reflex of the decline of commerce and the 
rise of manufactures was so like the religious movement 
that accompanied the rise of capitalism in Europe that 
it has been designated as "The New England Reforma- 

1 Gouge, loc. cit., p. 51. 2 Ibid., p. 36. 

3 Turner, "Rise of the New West," pp. 16-20; Ostrogorski, "Democ- 
racy and the Organization of Political Parties," Vol. I, pp. 26-27. 



THE FIRST CRISIS — 1819 



169 



tion." The orthodox clergy that had so long actively 
participated in the rulership of society were disturbed 
by the rise of new sects. In the very stronghold of 
Puritanism, the old orthodoxy was attacked and over- 
thrown by the most liberal of creeds, — Unitarianism. 
The Congregational clergy, long a part of the ruling 
hierarchy, was split into warring sects. William E. 
Channing wrote his famous letter in defense of Uni- 
tarianism to the Rev. Samuel Thatcher in 18 15. By 
the time the lines were clearly drawn it was discovered 
that the new religious forces had captured Harvard Col- 
lege. There was also a division of a similar character 
in the ranks of the Quakers, and numerous peculiar and 
separatist sects rose throughout the West. 1 

A national and independent industrial life could not but 
have its expression in the beginning of a national litera- 
ture. Washington Irving, really the first American 
author of any importance, wrote his " Knickerbocker's 
History of New York" in 1809, and his next, and much 
more important work, the " Sketch Book," in 1819. 
Emerson was graduated from Harvard in 182 1, the same 
year that James Fenimore Cooper published "The 
Spy." The North American Review was founded in 181 5, 
and published "Thanatopsis," by William Cullen Bryant, 
the next year. 2 

1 W. B. Cairns, "The Development of American Literature from 
1815 to 1833," Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, pp. 8-9. 

2 Ibid., p. 25. 



CHAPTER XVI 



CONDITION OF THE WORKERS IN THE CHILDHOOD OF 

CAPITALISM 

Social evolution in America has always moved with 
accelerated speed, and frequently with syncopated meas- 
ure as compared with its typical form in western Eu- 
rope. These features were especially noticeable in the 
introduction of the factory system. In England the 
progress of industry was from the " household" stage, 
in which each family produced for its own consumption, 
to the "domestic" stage, where the family was still the 
productive unit and the home the only factory, but 
where production was for the market. 

The "domestic" stage was never general in the 
United States. The transition was almost direct from 
the "household" to the factory system. 

In still another direction American development dis- 
plays its accelerated tempo. In the first stage of the 
factory system in the English cotton trade, only the 
spinning was done by machinery. Weaving was still 
done in the homes, even at the time the factory system 
was gaining a foothold in the United States. This 
transitional stage, combining the old and the new, never 
existed here. The first establishment in the world to 
apply the factory system to the entire process of manu- 
facturing cotton cloth, and to perform all the processes 
by machinery under one roof, was the factory erected 

170 



CONDITION OF THE WORKERS 



171 



by Francis C. Lowell at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 
1814. 1 

There was a lack of hampering tradition in the work- 
ing out of the factory system on this side the Atlantic. 
Steam power was early made use of, although the in- 
fluence of water power in locating the early cotton fac- 
tories in New England should not be overlooked. Im- 
provements in the application of steam began to be 
made by American inventors about this time, indicating 
that industry in this country was henceforth to have an 
independent evolution. 2 

From the very beginning of the factory system in 
America, it was based upon the existence of a body of 
propertyless wageworkers. By 1820 there was a large 

1 C. D. Wright, "Industrial Evolution in the United States," p. 131. 

2 In 1816, Oliver Evans appeals to Congress for an extension of his 
patents on steam engines, and makes this remarkable and prophetic 
plea : "What will the annual amount of the benefits be when my Colum- 
bian engines shall be applied to work many thousands of mills, manu- 
factories, carriages on railways or smooth roads, boats on the great 
Atlantic and Western waters, raising the value of western lands 50 per 
cent, by lessening the time of going to market, tantamount to shorten- 
ing the distance : can any one calculate within one million of dollars?" 
A writer in Niks 1 Register for the same year (p. 219), commenting on an 
engine by David Heath, Jr., of New Jersey says: "An engine of four 
horse power, charged with fuel, may be comprised in the space appointed 
to the baggage of a stage, and may be lifted on and off the carriage with 
greatest ease; which carriage he can drive by experiment at the rate 
of fifteen miles an hour on the bare road, without the use of railways, 
being regulated to ascend and descend hills with uniform velocity and 
the greatest safety." On the same page with this remarkable descrip- 
tion is to be found an item telling of a marvelous rotary engine said to 
be "in operation in Messrs. A. & N. Brown's saw-mill, at Manhattan 
Island." The large number of such items appearing at this time in a 
single periodical is indicative of the great interest in mechanical progress 
and the inventive activity of the country. 

4 



172 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

class of wage laborers employed in weaving, shipbuilding, 
shoemaking, iron and steel making, printing, rope and 
sail manufacturing, the building trades, and the con- 
struction of turnpikes and canals. 

The misery of early English factory workers has 
become the classic illustration of vicarious suffering in 
the cause of social evolution. The similar sufferings of 
American workers at the same stage are less familiar. 
In both countries the cradle and the home were robbed 
to secure victims for the natal sacrifice of newborn 
capitalism. 

A member from New York expressed his gratification 
upon the floor of Congress in 1816 that "Arkwright's 
machinery has produced a revolution in the manufac- 
ture of cotton; the invention is so excellent, the effect 
in saving labor so immense, that five or six men are 
sufficient for the management of a factory of 2000 
spindles, spinning 100,000 pounds of twist yarn yearly; 
the other hands are mere children, whose labor is of 
little use in any other branch of industry." 1 

A Congressional committee in the same year estimated 
that of the 100,000 persons then employed in the cloth 
industry, only 10,000 were men, while 66,000 were 
" women and female children," and 23,000 were boys. 
Matthew Carey waxes enthusiastic over the opportuni- 
ties the factory owners offered to young girls. Of one 
neighborhood he tells us that the girls were " before the 
establishment of the factory in a state of idleness, bare- 
footed and living in wretched hovels. But since that 
period they are comfortably fed and clothed — their 
habits and manners and dwellings greatly improved — 

1 Benton's "Abridgements of the Debates of Congress," Vol. V, p. 638. 



CONDITION OF THE WORKERS 



173 



and they have become useful members of society. . . . 
Judging from the state of other establishments, it is 
fair to presume that more than half of the whole num- 
ber were probably young females who, but for the fac- 
tory, would have been without employment, and spend- 
ing their time perniciously — a burden to their parents 
and society — trained up to vicious courses — but thus 
happily preserved from idleness and its attendant vices 
and crimes — and whose wages probably average $1.50 
a week." 1 

A committee that investigated the manufactures of 
Philadelphia prepared a table showing the wages paid 
for various classes of work. These varied from $11.54 
a week for the highest paid workers, who were engaged 
in making iron castings, to those who received but $2.70 
a week for paper hanging and the making of playing 
cards. 2 

There is perhaps no better summary of the general 
conditions of the workers of this period than that given 
by Matthew Carey in his essay on "The Public Chari- 
ties of Philadelphia," in which he says: — 

"Thousands of our laboring people travel hundreds 
of miles in quest of employment on canals at 62%, 75, 
and 87 J cents per day, paying $1.50 to $2 a week for 
board, leaving families behind, depending upon them for 
support. They labor frequently in marshy grounds, 
where they inhale pestiferous miasmata, which destroy 
their health, often irrecoverably. They return to their 
poor families broken-hearted, and with ruined constitu- 

1 Matthew Carey, "Essays on Political Economy," Address to the 
Farmers of the United States, pp. 458-459. 

2 Niks' Register, Oct. 23, 1819, p. 117. 



174 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tions, with a sorry pittance, most laboriously earned, 
and take to their beds sick and unable to work. Hun- 
dreds are swept off annually, many of them leaving 
numerous and helpless families. Notwithstanding their 
wretched fate, their places are quickly supplied by 
others, although death stares them in the face. Hun- 
dreds are most laboriously employed on turnpikes, 
working from morning to night at from half a dollar to 
three-quarters a day, exposed to the broiling sun in 
summer, and all the inclemency of our severe winters. 
There is always a redundancy of wood-pilers in our cities, 
whose wages are so low that their utmost efforts do not 
enable them to earn more than thirty-five to fifty cents 
per day. . . . Finally, there is no employment what- 
ever, how disagreeable or loathsome or deleterious so- 
ever it may be, or however reduced the wages, that does 
not find persons willing to follow it rather than beg or 
steal." 

As is always the case, the minimum of wages was ac- 
companied by the maximum of hours. From the regu- 
lations of a Paterson, New Jersey, mill we learn that 
their rules required "the women and children to be at 
their work at half-past four in the morning. They 
are allowed half an hour for breakfast and three- 
quarters of an hour for dinner, and then work as long 
as they can see." 1 

The spokesmen of the ruling class at this time were 

1 Seth Luther, "Address to the Workingmen of New England " (1836), 
pp. 42-43. Further information on the condition of labor at this time 
will be found in McMaster, "A Century of Social Betterment," in the 
Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXIX, p. 22; " History of the People of the 
United States," Vol. V, p. 121 ; Michael Chevalier, "The United States," 
pp. 137-144; Niks' Register, May 8, 1819, Oct. 5, 1816, Dec. 2, 1815. 



CONDITION OF THE WORKERS 



175 



continually complaining that wages were "too high." 
The defenders of a protective tariff insisted that manu- 
factures could not exist with such high wages without 
protection. The opponents of the tariff declared that 
these unreasonably high wages would always make 
manufacturing impossible, and that their existence was 
an insuperable obstacle to factories. Both sides agreed 
that wages were too high. President Monroe, in one of 
his annual messages, congratulated the manufacturers 
on the "fall in the price of labor, apparently so favor- 
able to the success of domestic manufactures. " 

Perhaps public officials would not have been so frank 
to approve of low wages had the working class not been 
politically helpless. There was some sort of property 
qualification for voting in every state, and a still higher 
test for office holding. The governor of Massachusetts 
was required to be "a Christian worth £1000," while 
he who would aspire to the governorship of Georgia 
must be the possessor of 500 acres of land and £4000. 

Indirect voting was the rule. Governors were com- 
monly elected by the legislatures. Presidential candi- 
dates were selected by Congressional caucuses, com- 
posed of the members of Congress of each political party. 
The presidential electors were then chosen by the legis- 
latures, and a property qualification was generally re- 
quired of voters for members of the legislatures. 

There was a nominal, universal, compulsory military 
service, with a farcical "training day" when every able- 
bodied man was required to report for drill under the 
direction of a petty popinjay with shoulder straps. 

There is much complaint of class legislation and ad- 
ministration of justice to-day, but we have traveled a 



176 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

long way from the state of things in the early twenties. 
The laborer had no lien upon his product, and, in con- 
sequence, was frequently defrauded of his meager wages. 
On the other hand, he could be robbed of his utmost 
farthing by a creditor, as the principle of exemption of 
a certain minimum of wages and property from seizure 
for debts had not yet been established. 

It was not alone that the debtor with too little property 
to secure the benefit of the newly enacted bankruptcy 
law could be stripped of every possession. If these 
failed to satisfy the debt, his person could be seized. 
The laborer who was thus unable either to discharge his 
debt or to secure relief through bankruptcy was subject 
to imprisonment. No matter how small the sum, he 
was sentenced to remain in jail until the debt was paid. 
Since the imprisonment effectually prevented the earn- 
ing of any money with which to meet his obligations, 
it was no very infrequent thing for a man to be im- 
prisoned for years or even for life because of a debt of 
a few shillings. Once in jail, the state made no pro- 
vision for his food, clothing, or fuel. 

The report of the Prison Discipline Society for 1829 
estimated that more than 75,000 were imprisoned for 
debt annually in the United States, and that of these 
more than one half owed less than twenty dollars. 
Owing to the lack of any public provision for the most 
essential needs, the debtors' prisons became veritable 
chambers of horrors. There was no distinction made as 
to sex, age, or character. All were driven together into 
a common room. Even as far north as New York 
there was not always a shelter from the elements. With 
what appears to us now as grim irony, charitable societies 



CONDITION OF THE WORKERS 



177 



were formed, not to abolish imprisonment for debt, or 
to pay the debts and secure the liberty of the victims, 
but to furnish sufficient food, clothing, and fuel to pro- 
long the agony of the suffering prisoners. 

The educational facilities of the United States were 
at their very lowest ebb in the years from 1814 to 1828. 1 
The old social order had lost its strength. The new one 
had not had the time to develop an educational expres- 
sion. The most efficient schools were the private acade- 
mies of New England. The public schools, the only 
ones accessible to the wageworkers, were less efficient 
than at any period before or since. The management 
of the schools had been subdivided in response to the 
individualistic, competitive, separatist spirit of early 
capitalism until the little school districts were almost 
autonomous. 2 Religious education had declined with 
the overthrow of the theocracy, and the multitude of 
seceding sects had not yet built up educational institu- 
tions. Massachusetts, then, as throughout American 
history, at the head in educational matters, was expend- 
ing but $2.75 per pupil annually in education. She 
spends more than ten times as much to-day, and the 
poorest equipped Southern state, where educational facili- 
ties are least, does more than did the Old Bay State at 
the close of the first quarter of the last century. 3 

The great outlet for such of the workers as were 
crushed beyond endurance as wage earners was the 
pioneer life in the Ohio Valley. Without the existence 

1 Edwin G. Dexter, "History of Education in the United States," 
pp. 97-98 ; Frank T. Carlton, " Economic Influences upon Educational 
Progress in the United States," Bulletin Univ. of Wisconsin, pp. 22-28. 

2 Carlton, loc. ciL, p. 20. 3 Dexter, loc. cit., p. 98. 

N 



178 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

of this "free land," the condition of labor would have 
been far worse. This fact was noted by all European 
observers. Michael Chevalier, who was sent to this 
country in 1834 by Thiers, then Minister of the Interior 
of France, makes this comparison between America and 
Europe : 1 — 

" While the Americans have the vast domain of the 
West, a common fund from which, by industry, each 
may draw for himself and by himself an ample heritage 
an extreme fall of wages is not to be apprehended. . . . 
In Europe a coalition of workmen can only signify one 
of these two things : raise our wages or we shall die of 
hunger with our wives and children, which is an absurdity; 
or raise our wages, if you do not, we shall take up arms, 
which is civil war. In Europe there is no other possible 
construction to be placed upon it. But in America, on 
the contrary, such a coalition means, raise our wages or 
we go to the West." 

Out of this West a democratic breeze was blowing, 
that was to grow into a small storm before the end of 
the thirties. The equality of the pioneer struggle against 
the wilderness was finding expression in political democ- 
racy. The new states were coming into the Union on a 
basis of universal manhood suffrage. But not all of the 
workers who felt the goad of oppression were being driven 
to the West. Some were inclined to turn and fight 
that oppression. That fight was to introduce a new 
force into those that formulate American institutions. 
It was to give rise to the first real American labor move- 
ment. 

1 Michael Chevalier, "The United States," p. 144. 



CHAPTER XVII 



THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT — 1824-1836 

The introduction of even the beginnings of the factory 
system, displacing craftsmen and tools by the wage- 
worker and the machine, and the consequent gathering 
of large bodies of workers dealing with a single employer 
— in short, the rise of an exploited proletariat — was 
certain to create organized resistance to exploitation by 
that proletariat. There had been loose associations of 
workingmen for many years who sometimes " walked 
out" to secure better conditions. Such a " walk-out" 
had taken place among journeymen bakers in New York 
in 1 74 1. It was not until 1825, however, that labor 
unions were generally established throughout the north- 
eastern portion of the United States. By 1833 we find 
the following trades participating in a parade organized 
by the " Central Trade Union" of New York City: 
" Typographical Union, Journeymen House Carpenters, 
Book Binders, Leather Dressers, Coopers, Carvers and 
Gilders, Bakers, Cabinet Makers, Cordwainers (men), 
Cordwainers (women), Tailors, Silk Hatters, Stone Cut- 
ters, Tin-Plate and Sheet Iron Workers, Type Founders, 
Hat Finishers, Willow-Basket Makers, Chair Makers and 
Gilders, Sail Makers, and Block and Pump Makers." 

Sixteen unions joined to found the "General Trade 
Union" of Boston in 1834. In this same year a writer 
in The Workingman^s Advocate of New York esti- 

179 



180 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

mated the number of members in the labor unions of 
New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, 
and Newark at 26,250, an exceedingly high proportion 
of the number of wage-earners in those cities. 

The first trade union journal in the world was the 
Mechanics' Free Press, published in Philadelphia from 
1828 to 1 83 1, antedating by two years any similar Eng- 
lish periodical. There is also a dispute as to whether the 
first genuine trade union existed in this country or in 
England. 1 It is certain that the movement under dis- 
cussion was taking place at the same time as the first 
important union movement in Great Britain, and that 
it is impossible for either country to claim either the 
blame or the credit for having originated this inevitable 
spontaneous resistance of Labor. 

Between seventy-five and one hundred periodicals 
devoted to Labor appeared in the northeastern states 
about this time, a number scarcely exceeded in the 
same territory three quarters of a century later. Two 
daily papers, The Man and The Daily Sentinel, were 
maintained during a part of this period to present the 
cause of the workers. Considering the restricted num- 
bers of the wageworkers, the undeveloped stage of 
printing and paper manufacture, and consequent diffi- 
culties in the road of periodical publication, this record 
is seen to be little short of marvelous. 

These unions had benefit funds for the sick and out of 
work and those on strike. They had their union scales, 
and conducted strikes and declared boycotts to main- 
tain them, and signed contracts with the employers when 

1 " Documentary History of American Industrial Society," Vol. V, 
pp. 21-22. 



THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT — 1824-1836 181 

victorious. They had their pickets who were accused 
of " slugging scabs "; and in some cases at least the " union 
shop" was demanded and secured. Wages were in- 
creased in many trades, and the condition of Labor was 
bettered in many ways. Their most general demand on 
the economic field was for the ten-hour day, to secure 
which many strikes were conducted. They succeeded 
in securing this standard in a large number of trades; and 
finally, as a result of their agitation, President Van Buren 
announced the introduction of the ten-hour day in all 
government work. 

Every economic movement has some sort of a political 
expression. This early labor movement was no excep- 
tion. Workingmen's tickets were placed in nomination 
in New York, Rochester, Philadelphia, and several 
smaller cities, and a number of minor offices were cap- 
tured. Legislative nominations were made in New York 
and Pennsylvania. In the former state Ebenezer Ford 
was elected to the Assembly upon the Workingman's 
ticket in 1829, polling a vote of 6166. 

It is when we study the programs, platforms, and prin- 
ciples of this early labor movement and its political ex- 
pression that its real importance as a factor in the evolu- 
tion of American society appears. The things for which 
it fought, and many of which it secured directly, are just 
the features of our society of which Americans are most 
inclined to boast. 

The one dominant feature of every section of this 
labor movement was the almost fanatical insistence upon 
the paramount importance of education. In political 
platforms, in resolutions of public meetings, and in the 
labor press the statement is repeated over and over, that 



1 82 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



the fundamental demand of Labor is for an adequate 
system of education. 

A workingmen's meeting held in New York, March 
20, 1830, adopted this resolution: — 

" Resolved, that next to life and liberty we consider 
education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind. 

" Resolved, that the public funds should be appro- 
priated to the purpose of education, upon a regular 
system, that shall ensure the opportunity to every in- 
dividual of obtaining a competent education before he 
shall have arrived at the age of maturity." 1 

A writer in the Mechanics' Free Press of Philadel- 
phia, August 12, 1829, in reply to the question, "What 
do the workingmen expect ? what do they wish ?" said : 
" I have attended their late meetings in the city generally, 
and obtained the sentiments of a number of such as take 
an active part in their business, and find the great and 
primary object to be, a general system of education on 
an independent principle." The Pennsylvania system 
of education was particularly pernicious. It provided 
free schools only for those who were willing to declare 
themselves paupers. The rich sent their children to 
private institutions. There was no provision whatever 
for the children of those who were neither paupers nor 
wealthy. 2 

Again and again this cry for education is reiterated. 3 
Nor were the workers content with merely protesting and 

1 Free Enquirer, Mar. 20, 1830. 

2 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. V, 
pp. 360-362. 

3 Free Enquirer, Feb. 4, 1829; Aug. 12, 1829; Sept. 30, 1829 ; Farm- 
ers 7 , Mechanics 7 and Workingmen's Advocate, Apr. 3, 1830; Mechanics' 
Free Press, Sept. 19, 1829. 



THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT — 1824-1836 183 

resoluting. They were far in advance of their age in their 
knowledge of educational methods. One of the most 
remarkable documents of this time is a report prepared 
by a committee of Philadelphia workingmen who were 
appointed to study the educational situation. 1 This 
report is not only an extremely keen and scholarly criti- 
cism of the existing system, but outlines a scheme of 
education, embracing kindergartens, and a combination 
of manual training with education. They support their 
arguments for such a system by illustrations drawn 
from similar educational establishments in Switzerland, 
France, Prussia, and Great Britain. 

There were undoubtedly other influences making for 
education at this time. The factory system requires a 
certain amount of trained intelligence for its operatives, 
and has always been accompanied by some form of popu- 
lar education. Yet when this period is examined in 
detail there is no other single force making for education 
that can be compared with the working-class movement, 
and there is no escape from the conclusion that to this 
movement, more than to any other single cause, if not 
more than to all other causes combined, is due the com- 
mon school system of the United States. 

In all directions this movement was laying the founda- 
tion of democratic institutions. The far-sightedness 
and comprehensively progressive character of its pro- 
gram is remarkable. The chairman of a convention of 
workingmen held in Boston in 1833 gives the following 
summary of the measures advocated: — 

" The operatives and producers are generally agreed 
that the abolition of all licensed monopolies and im- 

1 Published in The Workingman's Advocate, Mar. 6, 1830. 



1 84 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



prisonment for debt, a revision of our present militia and 
law systems, equal taxation of property, an effective lien 
law, a district system of elections, the number of legis- 
lators reduced to the proportion of territory and popu- 
lation, a transfer of a greater part of the appointing power 
from the executive to the people, the credit and banking 
systems, mortgages, salaries, rotation in office, small 
districts for the recording of land titles, and the settle- 
ment of estates, the third article, the poll-tax, and, above 
all, an universal and useful education, afford subjects 
for their vigilant enquiry and severe investigation." 

Measured by success in the attainment of its objects, 
this first American labor movement has but few equals in 
the history of the world. A study of the list of the 
things for which it worked is a study of the establishment 
of what is best in present society. 1 The platforms of the 

1 The platform upon which Ebenezer Ford was elected to the New 
York legislature read as follows : — 

"Resolved, In the opinion of this meeting, the first appropriation of 
the soil of this state to private and exclusive possession was eminently 
and barbarously unjust. 

"Resolved, That it was substantially feudal in its character, inasmuch 
as those who received enormous and unequal possessions were lords, 
and those who received little or nothing, were vassals. 

"Resolved, That hereditary transmission of wealth on the one hand, 
and poverty on the other, has brought down to the present generation 
all the evils of the feudal system, — and this, in our opinion, is the prime 
cause of all our calamities. 

"Resolved, In this view of the matter, the greatest knaves, impostors 
and paupers of the age are our bankers, who swear they have promised 
to pay their creditors thirty or thirty-five millions of dollars on demand, 
at the same time that they have, as they also swear, only three or four 
millions to do it with. 

"Resolved, That more than one hundred broken banks within a few 
years past admonish the community to destroy banks altogether. 

" Resolved, That exemption is a privilege ; and as such the exemption 



THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT — 1824-1836 185 



labor parties of this time are new Declarations of Inde- 
pendence, throwing off old shackles and drafting the lines 

from taxation of churches and church property, and the property of 
priests to an amount not exceeding $1500 is a direct and positive robbery 
of the people." 

A far more typical platform than this is the one submitted by a com- 
mittee of fifty to a great workingmen's meeting held in Military Hall, 
New York, Dec. 29, 1829, and reported in the Free Enquirer for March 
20, 1830. The following extracts are taken from this report : — 

" We take the opportunity solemnly to aver . . . that we have no desire 
or intention of disturbing the rights of property in individuals or the 
public. . . . 

"One principle that we contend for is the abolition of imprisonment 
for debt. . . . 

"Resolved that we explicitly disavow all intention to intermeddle 
with rights of individuals either as to property or religion. . . . 

"Resolved that we are in favor of searching laws for the detection of 
concealed or fraudulently conveyed property; and emphatically in 
favor of the entire abolition of imprisonment for debt. 

"Resolved that next to life and liberty, we consider education the 
greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind. 

"Resolved that our sentiments in relation to a well constructed lien 
law, which would secure to thousands of our fellow citizens that just 
recompense their services entitle them to, and prevent innumerable 
frauds on the producing classes, are well known to our representatives, 
and that we expect their efficient support for this measure. 

"Resolved that our present militia system is highly oppressive to the 
producing classes of the community, without any beneficial result to 
individuals or the state. 

"Resolved that the present auction system, which operates as a 
means of oppressing the producing classes, by introducing quantities 
of the products and labor of foreign countries, which otherwise would 
be furnished by our own mechanics, is fraught with alarming evils, and 
should be immediately restricted. 

"Resolved that the credit system on duties at our custom house, which 
furnishes the auctioneers and foreign importers with an additional 
capital of $15,000,000 at all times in this city, the greater part of which 



1 86 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



along which progress was to be made for the next gen- 
eration and more. There was little that was fantastic in 
their program. There was little of the populistic reac- 
tion that has so generally characterized the pioneers in 
their attacks upon a creditor class. 

When the movement died out in 1835 to 1837, the face 
of society had been largely transformed. Imprisonment 
for debt was no more. A mechanics' lien law was in 
existence in nearly every state in the Union, and the 
principle that the producer has the first claim upon his 
product had become a fundamental principle in Ameri- 
can jurisprudence. The credit system, as applied to 
the tariff, which, as was pointed out by the laborers, 

is drawn from the producing classes, they being the consumers, is an 
evil of immense magnitude, and demands our immediate attention. 

"Resolved that the banks under the administration of their present 
directors and officers, and by the concert of auctioneers and foreigners, 
aided by custom house credits, form a monopoly that is hostile to the 
equal rights of the American merchant, manufacturer, mechanic, and 
laboring-man; and that the renewal by the legislature of the charters 
prayed for will confirm and perpetuate an aristocracy which eventually 
may shake the foundations of our liberties and entail slavery upon our 
posterity. 

"Resolved that our courts of justice should be so reformed that the 
producing classes may be placed upon an equality with the wealthy. 

"Resolved that the present laws that compel the attendance of jurors 
and witnesses for days and weeks at our courts, without a fair compen- 
sation, are unjust, and require immediate attention. 

"Resolved, that with many of our past and present rulers the great 
qualification to obtain office is an ability, supposed or real, to render 
them or their party some political service. 

"Resolved that there should be no intermediate body of men between 
the electors and the candidates. . . . 

"Resolved that the State of New York ought to be divided into as 
many districts as there are members of the Assembly to represent it." 



THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT — 1824-1836 187 

granted immense loans to a few favored shippers, and was 
the means of building up some of the greatest fortunes in 
America, 1 was abolished. Horace Mann was leading the 
"educational revival," and the common school was an 
established institution in nearly every state. 2 The gro- 
tesque militia system had been abolished. Important 
reforms in land tenure were under way in New York 
State that were to wipe out the last of the feudal privi- 
leges of the land barons. The war upon the Bank had 
been taken up by Jackson and his frontier followers, and 
the present subtreasury system was being prepared to 
take its place. Payment for jurors and witnesses had 
become a part of American court practice, and other 
important reforms tending to democratize the courts had 
taken place. The first blow had been struck at the 
spoils system in office, and while little effect was pro- 
duced at this time, because of the presence of forces that 
will be discussed in the next chapter, these early achieve- 
ments stand as guideposts pointing the road that would 
be traveled many years later. Presidential electors were 
being elected by popular vote, and members of the leg- 
islature chosen by districts. Property qualifications for 
voting and for office had almost completely disappeared, 
and American politics took on the form of democracy 
for the first time. 

It would be foolish to say that all of these changes 
were brought about directly by the working-class move- 
ment. But the organized workers were the only ones 
that were publicly and energetically demanding these 

1 Gustavus Myers, "Great American Fortunes," Vol. I, pp. 79-80. 

2 Edwin G. Dexter, "History of Education in the United States," 
pp. 98-100. 



188 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

steps. They were strong enough to exert a great in- 
fluence. No other force can begin to compete with the 
labor movement as a direct cause of these important 
steps. Is it, then, too much to say that this movement 
of the workers, measured by the impress it left, was the 
most important event in American history? 

This labor movement had its philosophical as well as its 
political expression. Three writers at this time sought to 
express Labor's attitude toward the economic problems 
with which it was confronted. Thomas Skidmore wrote 
" Rights of Man to Property" in 1829. He was an 
active organizer of the New York Labor Party in the 
beginning, but was finally forced out of the organization 
in an internal dissension, and afterwards ran for office on 
an independent ticket. L. Byllesby wrote " Sources and 
Effects of Unequal Wealth " in 1826, and Stephen Simpson 
published his " Workingman's Manual" in 1831. It 
was to be nearly thirty years before another volume 
worthy of notice should be added to the literature of 
labor in the United States. 

In these works we find attempts to construct a political 
economy based upon social relations as seen through the 
eyes of workers. It cannot be said that the attempt was 
a success, although the work of these writers compares 
fairly well with contemporaneous works on the same 
subject in other countries. 

All three are based upon a more or less clear presenta- 
tion of the labor value theory, and it is easy to find 
germs of a theory of exploitation based upon the prin- 
ciple of ownership. But an economic philosophy is 
not developed in so short a period as the life of this 
movement. 



THE FIRST LABOR MOVEMENT — 1 8 24-1 836 189 

In the discussion of practical tactics much more was 
accomplished. The doctrine of the " class struggle," 
based upon contending economic interests, was clearly 
expressed. When Karl Marx was a boy of thirteen, 
Simpson was writing a paragraph that contains much of 
the germ of the Communist Manifesto. Simpson says, 
after a discussion of what he calls "personal parties" : 1 

" Parties of interest . . . are less noxious, because one 
party may be brought to check or control another, as 
the party of stockholders and capitalists may be met and 
counteracted by the party of the producers; which is a 
real party of general interest, whose ascendency could not 
fail to shed a genial and prosperous beam upon the whole 
society. Such a party would merely exhibit the interests 
of society, concentrating for the true fulfillment of the 
original terms of the social compact, the happiness and 
the comfort of the whole. This we now behold in those 
parties of the workingmen, who . . . steadily follow in 
the path of science and justice, under the banner of — 
labor the source of all wealth, and industry the arbiter of 
its distribution" (italics in original). 

The question of "pure and simple" trade unionism 
vs. political activity was debated at this period, with 
much the same arguments that are used to-day. 

We search this period in vain, however, to find any 
general acceptation of the principles of collectivism. 
Not even when Robert Owen addressed great meetings 

1 "The Workingman's Manual" (1831), p. 23. See also The Man, 
May 30, 1834, communication by "Boston Mechanic"; Resolution in 
Mechanics' Free Press, Aug. 16, 1828; ibid., Sept. 20, 1828; Free En- 
quirer, Feb. 4, 1829, for expressions on class struggle, and The National 
Laborer, June 24 and July 6, 1836, on political action. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



of the workers and took a part in formulating their reso- 
lutions 1 was he able to impress his ideas upon this early 
labor movement. The factory system was not suffi- 
ciently ripe for a collectivist labor movement. Col- 
lectivism in all its forms was still a Utopian scheme of 
dreamers in other classes of society. The rampant in- 
dividualism of young competitive capitalism determined 
the Zeitgeist of the period, and that spirit made its in- 
fluence felt even upon the labor movement that fought 
that capitalism. 

1 Meeting reported in W orkingman' s Advocate, Oct. 31, 1829, 



CHAPTER XVIII 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 183O-1850 

The forces and interest whose germination took place 
about 1814 to 1819, came into full view during this period. 
It was a time in which economic interests were ma- 
neuvering to strengthen their position and prepare for 
coming struggles. Population was shifting rapidly, 
and the direction of that shifting was perhaps the most 
important feature of the period. Until this time settle- 
ment west of the Alleghenies had been confined almost 
exclusively to the neighborhood of the Ohio River. 
Michigan, Wisconsin, northern Ohio, Illinois, and In- 
diana were still almost as completely in the possession 
of the Indians as when the continent was discovered. 
Chicago was only a trading post in the midst of a swamp. 
The whole line of lake ports that have become such a 
prominent, and indeed almost dominant feature of the 
social and industrial life of this nation were largely but 
meeting places for fur traders and Indians. 

Immigration had flowed down the Ohio River and up 
through Cumberland Gap from the slave states of Ten- 
nessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. Stephen A. Douglas, 
discussing the admission of Kansas in the United States 
Senate, February 29, i860, spoke as follows of the immi- 
gration into Illinois prior to 1830 : — 

"The fact is that the people of the territory of Illi- 

191 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



nois, when it was a territory, were about all from the 
southern states, particularly from Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee. The southern end of the state was the only 
part at first settled. . . . The northern part . . . was 
then in the possession of the Indians, and so were north- 
ern Indiana and northern Ohio ; and a Yankee could 
not get to Illinois at all, unless he passed down through 
Virginia and over into Tennessee and Kentucky. The 
consequence was that 99 out of 100 of the settlers were 
from the slave states. They carried the old family 
servants with them and kept them. . . . When they 
assembled to make the constitution of Illinois in 18 18 
. . . nearly every delegate to the convention brought his 
negro along with him to black his boots, play the fiddle, 
wait upon him and take care of his room. . . . 

"But they said, 'Experience proves that it is not 
going to be profitable in this climate.' They had no 
scruples about its being right, but they said, 'We can- 
not make any money by it, and as our state runs away 
up north, up to those eternal snows, perhaps we shall 
gain population faster if we stop slavery and invite in 
the northern population.'" 

This attitude of indifference on the slavery question 
was soon to pass away. Upland cotton was carrying 
the slaveholding planters in great numbers into Ala- 
bama, Georgia, and Mississippi. Here slavery was im- 
mensely profitable. The slave owners therefore wished 
to control the national government, to defend and ad- 
vance slavery. 

By 1830 a new and northern gateway to this region 
had been opened up, and through this a throng of settlers 
from New England, New York, and later from Europe 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1850 193 



were pouring into the lake states. These were founding 
a society in which another form of labor was more profit- 
able than chattel slavery. They also were to demand 
the use of the national government to further the sys- 
tem from which they derived a profit. Out of the clash 
of these two systems was to come the Civil War. 

Agriculture was still the occupation of far more than 
a majority of the population. The upper Mississippi 
Valley, henceforth the agricultural center of the United 
States, was being developed by 1830. Great quantities 
of grain were raised in these states, but the difficulty of 
marketing made such crops of little profit. 1 

Whenever corn is cheap and too plenty to be trans- 
formed into whisky, it is always made into pork. The 
hog has been the " walking corncrib" that has marketed 
the maize of the American farmer. Illinois, Indiana, 
Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee raised vast numbers of 
hogs. 2 In the beginning these were driven in great 
droves over the mountains to the seaport markets. 

By 1820 a new and important step had been taken in 
this industry. Instead of driving the hogs to market 
while alive, packing plants were established along the 
Ohio River, where, during the winter, the animals were 
slaughtered and salted down for shipment. 3 These 
slaughtering establishments were little like the great 
packing houses of to-day. They were rented to the 
butchers for killing and dressing, and the dressed meat 

1 T. Flint, " Condensed Geography and History of the Western 
States," p. 227. 

2 J. N. Peck, " A Gazetteer of Illinois " (1834), p. 41. 

3 John Macgregor, "Progress of America" (1847); Semple, "Ameri- 
can History and its Geographic Conditions," p. 358. 

o 



IQ4 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



was then bought by the packers, who maintained estab- 
lishments in close proximity to the slaughter houses. 1 

Illinois was in the " ranch stage" of cattle raising until 
about 1840. Great herds of cattle were fed on the 
prairies and then rounded up and driven into Ohio to 
receive further feeding prior to the final drive to the 
stall feeders of Pennsylvania. 2 This is the same com- 
bination of ranch, pasture, and feeders that existed on 
the eastern slope of the Alleghenies prior to the Revo- 
lution. These stages were continually moving west, and 
the ranch stage had already entered Missouri 3 by 1830, 
and reached Texas a few years later. 4 In Tennessee, 
Ohio, and Kentucky another stage had been reached. 
Here the first steps were being taken in the introduction 
of improved breeds of cattle. 5 

The products of these states were all pressing for a 
market, and competition marked out lines of communi- 
cation and influence along which were to be waged indus- 
trial and political struggles. 

While agriculture was still the oldest and largest of 
the industrial family, manufacturing had already grown 
to a lusty, clamoring young giant, boastful of achieve- 
ment, lustful of power, and eager for government in- 
fluence. Iron and the textiles had grasped the leading 
position and were directing tariff policies. Each of these 

1 Macgregor, loc. cit. 

2 J. N. Peck, "A Gazetteer of Illinois" (1834), p. 40; Flint, "Con- 
densed Geography and History of the Western States," p. 128. 

3 Flint, loc. cit., Vol. II, p. 73. 

4 Census, 1880, Vol. III. Special article by Charles Gordon, "The 
Production of Meat," p. 11. 

5 Census i860, volume on "Agriculture," "Cattle and the Cattle 
Trade," p. cxxxiii. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1 830-1 850 195 



had settled in the localities that they now occupy. By 
1830 the United States was second only to England in 
the cotton industry. In 1840 three fourths of all Ameri- 
can cotton goods were produced in New England. 1 

Two great inventions revolutionized the iron indus- 
try and gave it a tremendous impetus. The hot blast 
process was first applied in 1834, and at once increased 
the production of each furnace 40 per cent, with a 
saving of the same percentage in fuel. 2 In 1840 anthra- 
cite coal began to be used in the smelting of iron, and 
within ten years had almost supplanted the more expen- 
sive charcoal method. 3 

In 1 83 1 iron was first used for pillars, window casings, 
and other general building purposes. 4 Wrought iron 
pipes were first manufactured in 1846, and one year 
later the first firm for the production of machinist tools 
was established in Nashua, New Hampshire. 5 The 
manufacture of power looms reached such a state of 
perfection that in 183 1 they began to be exported to 
England. 6 

The close proximity of iron ore, limestone, and coal, 
the three essentials to the production of iron, had already 
determined that Pittsburg should be the center of the 
production of this metal. 7 

At first the entire upper Mississippi Valley expected 
to be the seat of manufacturing, a destiny which it was 

1 E. L. Bogart, "Economic History of the United States," p. 149. 

2 M. D. Swank, "History of the Manufacture of Iron in all Ages," 
P. 453- 

3 Ibid., pp. 178,354-362. 

4 L. Bishop, "History of American Manufactures," Vol. II, p. 402. 

5 Ibid., p. 411. 6 Ibid., p. 363. 

7 M. D. Swank, "History of Iron in All Ages," pp. 176-178. 



196 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

to attain in another generation. Travelers filled their 
notebooks with lists of the factories they met in this 
locality. 1 The temporary disappointment in this regard 
had important political consequences. 

It was in transportation, however, that the great in- 
dustrial revolution of this time was wrought. The canal 
craze that had been raging for several years reached its 
climax and scored its greatest triumph in the opening of 
the Erie Canal in 1825. The effect of this engineering 
work upon the next thirty years of American history 
can scarcely be exaggerated. 

The next season after its opening 19,000 boats were 
counted as passing West Troy on the road to New York, 
most of which came from the West, over the Erie Canal. 2 
These bore the products of the West to market. An 
equal number of boats carried a human cargo in the 
other direction. This new flood of immigration changed 
the current of history in the West, and later of the 
whole country. The Erie Canal " shifted the great trans- 
Allegheny route away from the Potomac, out of the belt 
of the slaveholding, agricultural South, to the free, in- 
dustrial North, and placed it at the back door of New 
England, whence poured westward a tide of Puritan 
immigrants, infusing elements of vigorous conscience and 
energy into all the northern zone of states from the 
Genesee River to the Missouri and Minnesota." 3 

The whole district around the Great Lakes that had 
lain so long almost untouched by settlement was filled 

1 T. Flint, "Condensed Geography "and History of the Western States," 
Vol. I, p. 224. 

2 Ellen C. Semple, "American History and its Geographic Condi- 
tions," pp. 268-269. 1 Ibid. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1850 197 



with eager immigrants. From 1830 to 1840 the popu- 
lation of Michigan increased from 31,639 to 212,267, 
nearly all coming through the Erie Canal. Wisconsin 
and northern Illinois grew with almost equal rapidity, 
and received their increase by the same route. 1 Many 
of these immigrants came direct from Europe, thus in- 
troducing a new element into the population of this 
region. 

The general application of steam to boats upon the 
Great Lakes which was taking place at this time served 
to accentuate nearly all the movements just described. 
It brought population to the lake ports, added to the 
importance of the Erie Canal, and built up the small 
farmer and trader and manufacturing class in the upper 
Mississippi Valley. 

Then came the most revolutionary of all the inventions 
of a century of invention. Steam was applied to the 
hauling of cars upon rails. 

At once the " circle of the market" — the space within 
which an article can be profitably sold — was multiplied 
several fold. 2 A factory could now deliver its product 
at much more distant points. It could reach more 
customers. It could grow to an hitherto inconceivable 
size. 

The first railroads reflected all the crude anarchy that 
is characteristic of the effect of inventions under com- 
petition. It was not simply that the roads were me- 
chanically crude, although the defects in that line were 
innumerable. All the problems of track, and rolling 

1 "History of the Great Lakes" (no author given), pp. 183-189. 

2 I. L. Ringwalt, "Development of Transportation Systems in the 
United States," p. 129. 



198 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



stock and engine construction had to be solved with a 
lack of engineering skill and mechanical facilities almost 
inconceivable in these days. 1 There was an equal 
crudity and confusion in the relations of the various 
roads. Owned by a multitude of companies, laid out 
upon no definite plan, with no conception of future 
development, they reflected the anarchy of small capitalist 
individualism. 2 With or without system or order, rail- 
roads filled a most pressing need in a country of such 
magnificent distances as the United States, and they 
were built with remarkable rapidity. 3 The enthusiasm 
that had been devoted to canals was turned directly 
toward the new method of transportation. Since the 
canals had been built largely by governments, it was 

1 John Macgregor, "The Progress of America " (1847), Vol. II, p. 699 : 
"No two railroads are constructed alike. The fish-bellied rails of some, 
weighing forty pounds per lineal yard, rest upon cast-iron chains, weigh- 
ing sixteen pounds each; in others plate rails and malleable iron, 2\ 
inches broad and \ inch thick, are fixed by iron spikes to wooden sleep- 
ers ; in others a plate rail is spiked down to tree-nails of oak or locust 
wood, driven into jumper holes bored in the stone curb; in others longi- 
tudinal wooden runners, one foot in breadth, and from three to four 
inches in thickness, are imbedded in broken stone or gravel, on these 
runners are placed transverse sleepers, formed of round timbers with 
the bark left on, and wrought iron rails are affixed to the sleepers by long 
spikes, the heads of which are countersunk in the rail ; in others round 
piles of timber, about 12 inches in diameter, are driven into the ground 
as far as they will go, about three feet apart; the tops are then cross- 
cut, and the rails spiked to them." 

« N. S. Shaler, "The United States of America," Vol. II, p. 72 ; Amer- 
ican Railroad Journal, Vol. I, No. 1, Jan. 2, 1832. 

3 1. L. Ringwalt, loc. cit., p. 75, gives following table of railroads con- 
structed annually: — 

Year . 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839 
Miles . 39.8 98.7 191.3 115.9 213.9 137-8 280 348.3 452.8 385-8 

Total mileage built in decade, 2264.67. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1 830-1850 199 

but natural that railroads should be constructed in the 
same manner. Many of the state governments went 
heavily into debt to secure funds for railroad con- 
struction. Cities vied with one another in the same 
way. 1 

The panic of 1837 brought many of these projects, 
and with them the states that had financed them, to 
the verge of bankruptcy. 2 Indeed, in some instances 
the bankruptcy came before the railroads 'were even 
started. So it was that there came a strong reaction 
against government enterprise in railroad building. It 
could not have been different, in a society that was 
filled with the narrow individualism of youthful 
capitalism. 

While the railroads constructed directly under munici- 
pal or state governments were insignificant, the struggle 
of various cities for commercial advantage had a far- 
reaching influence upon all forms of communication. 
The three great gateways through the Allegheny barrier 
had each a seaport at the eastern end. At first Balti- 
more, with the Cumberland Gap and the National Turn- 
pike, had the advantage. Then Philadelphia, with her 
system of canals and inclined planes connecting her with 
the mouth of the Ohio, seemed destined to control the 
trade of the great trans- Allegheny region. 3 The com- 
pletion of the Erie Canal had a revolutionary effect 
upon this struggle of cities on the Atlantic seaboard, as 
it had upon the forces struggling for supremacy at its 

1 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. VI, 
PP- 347-3SO. 

J McMaster, loc. cit., Vol. VI, pp. 527, 530. 

3 H. S. Tanner, "General Outline of the United States" (1825), p. 67. 



200 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



western end. New York leaped forward in wealth and 
population as if by magic. 1 The whole route of the 
canal through New York State was transformed. New 
cities sprang up. Real estate values multiplied at a 
rate that brought a golden harvest to dealers in that 
commodity. Not only in New York, but in Pennsylvania, 
the local politics of the time hinged on questions of canal 
building and maintenance. 2 

The coming of railways strengthened the tendencies 
set in motion by the Erie Canal. Although Baltimore 
was the first to make use of the new means of transpor- 
tation to connect her with the West by means of the 
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and Philadelphia hastened 
to construct the Philadelphia and Columbia, connecting 
her with Pittsburg, yet when New York had once laid 
the rails that followed the route of the Erie Canal, low 
grades, and connection with the Great Lakes, whose 

1 The following table from Hunt's Merchant Magazine, Aug., 1868, 
p. 113, shows effect upon Philadelphia and New York : — 



Year 


Value of Imports 


Value of Exports 


Population 


New York 


Philadelphia 


New York 


Philadelphia 


New 
York 


Phila- 
delphia 


1820 
1830 
1840 
1850 


$38,556,064 
60,064,942 
116,667,558 


$9,525,893 
8,464,882 
12,065,834 


$11,769,511 
17,666,624 
32,408,689 
47,580,357 


$5,743,549 
4,291,793 
6,820,145 
4,501,606 


123,706 
203,007 
312,712 
515,394 


137,097 
188,961 
258,832 
409,353 



2 Julius Winden, "The Influence of the Erie Canal upon the Popula- 
tion along its Course"; quoted in A. B. Hulbert, "Great American 
Canals," Vol. II, Chap. V. See also Charles McCarthy, "The Anti- 
Masonic Party," in American Historical Association Reports, 1902, 
passim; Wm. Grant, in Hudson River Railroad Reports, pp. 9-10. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1850 201 



influence as avenues of commerce was now being felt, 
renewed the advantage given by the canal and which 
she has retained to the present day. 1 

New Orleans was another competitor for this western 
trade. Already she was losing the advantage which a 
favorable river current had given her, and this change 
in trade routes was building up forces that were deter- 
mining the outcome of the great conflict between the 
North and the South. 

In the midst of this industrial struggle, certain fairly 
well defined interests can be traced. New England, 
while still possessing powerful commercial interests, was 
dominated by the new manufacturing and financial class. 
The Middle states were more closely affiliated with her 
than with any other section, but the strong manufac- 
turing influence of Pennsylvania was already making 
her the leader in all demands for high tariff. The 
South, fairly prosperous and contented with the rapid 
extension of the cultivation of upland cotton, was united, 
but by no means aggressive in defending its interests 
save in regard to the tariff. The most striking interest 
was undoubtedly the young, virile, belligerent West. 
It played so prominent a part that most historians 
speak of this time as the "Rule of the Frontier." The 
frontier that ruled, however, was not that of the pioneer 
settler of the land, but the little-capitalist, petty trading, 
social frontier. How this outlook came to dominate is 
the real story of this period. 

In the decade preceding 1830 New England had be- 

1 Chauncey M. Depew (editor), "One Hundred Years of American 
Commerce"; chapter on "Interstate Commerce," by Edward A. Mose- 
ley, p. 27. 



202 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

come manufacturing and high tariff. 1 The South had 
become agricultural and free trade. 

In the beginning the West sided with the North 
Atlantic states for the tariff, and Henry Clay was "the 
Father of the American System." But by 1832, when 
Calhoun had evolved from a protectionist to a "Nulli- 
fier," ready to urge his native state to leave the Union 
rather than endure a high tariff, and Webster had under- 
gone an identical evolution in the opposite direction from 
free trader to protectionist, Henry Clay had also under- 
gone a change. He now appeared as "the Great Com- 
promiser," with the Compromise of 1832 providing for 
a gradual reduction of the tariff, much more in accord 
with the ideas of the South than of New England. 

The evolution of Clay, like that of Webster and Cal- 
houn, was due to economic changes in the district from 
which he came. Until about 1830 the West thought 
itself destined to become quickly a great manufacturing 
district. The crying need for the upper Mississippi 
Valley was a market for its crops This market was to 
be furnished by the great manufacturing centers soon to 
be established. So it was that the "home market" argu- 
ment made the West protectionist. But as time passed 
the manufactures of the West grew slowly. At the same 
time it became possible to export the agricultural prod- 
ucts over the improved transportation routes. The West 
grew indifferent to protection. Other interests tended 
to alienate it still further from its former ally. 

New England and the Middle Atlantic states, where 
manufacturing was increasing by stupendous leaps, 
wanted cheap wage labor. The West wanted settlers; 
1 F. J. Turner, " Rise of the New West," pp. 314-317. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1 830-1 850 203 

and every western pioneer who left the manufacturing 
centers reduced the supply of labor power and raised its 
price. Therefore the manufacturing states opposed the 
development of the West. They sought to restrict 
settlement, and opposed all measures looking to a liberal 
land policy. At the time when the West was quivering 
in the balance in its allegiance to the protective policy 
and the northeastern states, there came a dramatic inci- 
dent whose significance has been almost completely over- 
looked by those who are familiar with some of its phases. 
Tens of thousands of American schoolboys have de- 
claimed Daniel Webster's great peroration, with its con- 
clusion of " Liberty and the Union, now and forever, one 
and inseparable"; but how many of these know that this 
speech was delivered in support of a resolution offered 
by Senator Foote of Connecticut, proposing to stop the 
survey of public lands, limit the sales to those already 
in the market, and abolish the office of surveyor-general ? 

When this resolution was presented in the Senate, 
Benton of Missouri, long the spokesman of western 
interests, attacked it bitterly. Hayne of South Carolina, 
seeing an opportunity to draw the West from its alliance 
with the Northeast, came to Benton's support, and 
pointed out that the object of this resolution was to 
restrict the expansion of population until a servile and 
helpless wage working class should develop to supply 
cheap labor for manufactures. Webster accepted the 
challenge, and, ignoring Benton, whose support he 
wished to retain, attacked Hayne in the orations that 
have become so famous. Although generations of elo- 
cutionists have sung the praises of Webster and cele- 
brated his victory in forensic fireworks, yet he tern- 



204 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



porarily lost the cause for which he fought. The West 
was the ally of the South for the next generation. 1 

There were other causes of hostility between the West 
and the Northeast. The fish of New England and the 
flesh of the Mississippi Valley came into competition in 
the markets of the world, and competitors never love 
one another. The temper of the West was not im- 
proved on this question by the fact that the salt which 
was so necessary to the packing of western meat was 
subject to a high tariff, which was rebated to the fishers 
of New England. This rebate, in the form of a bounty, 
was a dearly loved privilege of the fishermen, which gave 
them a great advantage in the markets of the world 
and was another illustration of the value of class in- 
fluence upon government. 2 

The whole Indian question caused further friction. 
The traders who exchanged the cheap trinkets, flimsy 
fabrics, and poor whisky for the rich furs of the Indians, 
objected to the advance of settlement that interfered with 

1 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," Vol. VI, 
pp. 11-29; Thomas H. Benton, "Thirty Years' View," Vol. I, pp. 130- 
143. Woodrow Wilson, "A History of the American People," Vol. IV, 
p. 22 : "The New England men wanted the settlement of the West 
held back as much as possible. So long as land was to be had there 
almost for the mere asking, at no cost except that of a journey and of a 
few farmers' tools and a beast or two for the plough, the active men of 
their own section, whom they counted on as skilled workmen in building 
up their manufactures, must be constantly enticed away by the score 
and hundred to seek an independent life and livelihood in the West; 
high wages, very high wages, must be paid to keep them, if indeed they 
could be kept at all; and the maintenance of manufactures must cost 
more than mere protective tariffs could make good." See also Thomas 
Donaldson, "The Public Domain," p. 205 ; and Charles H. Peck, "The 
Jacksonian Epoch," p. 162. 

2 Benton, loc. cit., pp. 143-148, 154-157. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1850 205 



their trade. This trade was now at its most profitable 
stage. The American Fur Company of John Jacob 
Astor was making enormous profits, and had become a 
power in politics. 1 It was especially active in Michigan 
and Wisconsin, although its representatives had now 
reached the Pacific coast. 

An elaborate commercial system had developed with 
the far western tribes of Indians and with the Mexicans 
over the famous Santa Fe Trail, that was at its height 
from 1820 to 1840. 2 

There was in addition the long-standing antagonism 
between debtors and creditors that had always been a 
source of friction between the frontier and the coast. 
This antagonism found a convenient and conspicuous 
target in the second Bank of the United States that 
had been chartered in 1816. 

Daniel Webster had opposed the granting of the 
charter. At that time New England was still com- 
mercial, and, being opposed to the war and the policy 
of the national government, which was controlled by the 
South, was also opposed to all measures strengthening 
the power of the national government. At this time 
the overwhelming majority of the shares were owned in 
the South. 3 By 183 1 the general shifting of industrial 
conditions had reversed attitudes on the bank question, 
as well as on the tariff, and many other questions. In 
this year a meeting of the stockholders was held in 

1 Gustavus Myers, "History of Great American Fortunes," Vol. I, 
pp. 124-125, et passim; F. J. Turner, "Rise of the New West," 
p. 113. 

2 H. M. Chittenden, "The American Fur Trade of the Far West," 
Vol. II, p. 518. 

3 McMaster, "History of the People of the United States." 



206 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Philadelphia, with Stephen Girard as president. It 
was then officially reported that of the 350,000 shares 
of $100 each the United States held 70,000, that 79,000 
were held abroad, and that the remainder were owned 
in the following states in the order given : Pennsylvania, 
South Carolina, Maryland, New York, and Massachu- 
setts, while scarcely a share was owned west of the 
Appalachians. 1 

Webster was now the champion of the Bank, the 
South was indifferent and becoming hostile to it, while 
to the West it typified all that the words "Wall Street" 
conveyed to the mind of the Populist of 1890. The 
West was young, vigorous, militant, and took the lead 
in the fight. Therefore the Bank became the principal 
issue of the period. 

It was not difficult for the opponents of the Bank to 
show that it had been conducted in a fraudulent man- 
ner in its very beginning. 2 It had entered politics 
secretly from the first, and when attacked, threw off 
the mask and fought with the weapons that powerful 
financial interests have always used in a country of uni- 
versal suffrage. 

The Bank, in the eyes of the debtor West, stood for 
the whole hated creditor class. It had loaned heavily 
on western mortages, and had foreclosed many of these 
mortgages, until it was alleged that it owned great 
tracts of farm and city property. 3 It had favored the 
Eastern land speculator rather than the actual settler 

1 J. Schouler, "History of the United States," Vol. VI, p. 48. 

2 William M. Gouge, "Short History of Paper Money and Banking," 
pp. 31-32; Horace White, "Money and Banking"; Gustavus Myers, 
"History of Great American Fortunes," Vol. I, pp. 89-90. 

3 T. Benton, "Thirty Years' View," Vol. I, p. 198. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1850 



in the matter of loans, and had refused to extend credit 
to the residents of the West as freely as the state banks. 
Thus the state banks, to whom the United States Bank 
stood in the relation of a powerful competitor, were 
anxious to fan the antagonism of the frontier. 

The South had favored western expansion, and was 
now ready to make an alliance with the West in the 
attack upon the Bank in return for support in reducing 
the tariff. In this alliance the West, being the more 
virile rising element, dominated, and Andrew Jackson, 
who was largely typical of the speculative, small farmer 
and trader frontier, became President. In 1834 he 
finished his fight upon the Bank by removing the funds 
deposited with it by the national government. This so 
crippled the Bank that it sank into obscurity, and failed 
within a few years. 

The tremendous flood of immigration to the West 
had been accompanied, as such movements have always 
been, by a wild speculation in land. Starting imme- 
diately after the panic of 1819, this craze grew steadily, 
save for a brief setback following the withdrawal of the 
deposits from the Bank in 1833-1834, until it climaxed 
and collapsed in the panic of 1837. Shares in canals 
and the newly projected railroads added to the insanity, 
fanned still faster by the willingness of the " wildcat" 
banks to issue " scrip" which was accepted as payment 
for public lands, until at a time when every one was buy- 
ing land, they were all too crazy to farm, and wheat 
was actually imported from Russia and sold to land 
speculators in the West for $2 a bushel. 1 

1 J. B. McMaster, "History of the People of the United States," 
Vol. VI, pp. 323-389; Anon., "Eighty Years' Progress," pp. 147-152. 



208 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The income from the sale of public land leaped from 
less than four million dollars in 1833 to more than 
$24,000,000 in 1836. 1 The public income was so great 
that a surplus accumulated in the United States treasury, 
and was distributed to the several states. In short, 
there were all the phenomena of inflation that precede a 
competitive crisis. Just as the bubble was blown to 
the bursting point, President Jackson furnished the pin- 
prick that burst it by issuing his famous "Specie Circu- 
lar." This simply stated that nothing but specie would 
be received in payment for land. All the vast quantities 
of bank notes, being no longer received by the govern- 
ment, lost much of their value, and the whole industrial 
structure came tumbling down. 

Bad harvests in the wheat country and a simultaneous 
panic in England completed the prostration of industry. 
There were new investigations of the cause of distress. 
More charity societies were organized. The unemployed 
filled the streets. Mobs in New York City stormed the 
shops of those who were alleged to have monopolized 
breadstuff s, and destroyed great quantities of wheat and 
flour. The new corporation stocks set the example that 
has been followed by generation after generation of 
similar stocks, and promptly lost all value. Failure after 
failure of banks, merchants, and manufacturers were 
heralded in the journals. Prices of all goods fell rapidly, 
but no one had the means to purchase at any price. 
Specie payments were suspended by all the banks, these 
being the only establishments that, even at this early 
date, were allowed to refuse to pay their debts and still 
continue to do business. As money disappeared from 
1 Donaldson, " The Public Domain," pp. 201-203. 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1850 209 



circulation, all sorts of expedients were resorted to. 
Individuals issued scrip, and checks for subsidiary coins ; 
and the larger portion of the population, especially in 
rural districts, relapsed once more to the stage of barter. 1 
Then came the slow process of recovery. There was 
a great western movement of actual settlers, a slow 
readjustment of industry, a growing discontent which 
found expression, as it has so often done since, by chang- 
ing political rulers; and then industry started upon 
another upward climb toward another plunge into the 
depths. 

On the basis of the industrial stage just described 
there developed a peculiar mental attitude, and a set of 
social and political principles and institutions that set 
their stamp upon all subsequent history. 

The common interpretation of this period is that it 
was the rule of the frontier, and that it was an example 
of perfect democracy. There is more than a semblance 
of truth in these statements. 

The two largest elements of the population that 
possessed that sense of coming social power which alone 
gives the class consciousness necessary to effective action 
were the frontiersmen and the wageworkers of the cities. 
The latter fired into brief activity, and were then 
swallowed up in other classes, largely in that of the pio- 
neers of the Northwest. Those who remained at home 
accepted the mental attitude of the small manufacturers, 
— the rising bourgeoisie. Those who went west de- 
veloped much the same psychology. 

Out of this industrial condition sprang that peculiar 
thing that has been called "Jacksonian Democracy." 

1 J. B. McMaster, he. ciL, Vol. VI, Chap. LXV. 
p 



2IO SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



It was neither frontier, nor wageworking, nor even purely 
capitalist in its mental make-up. It can be better char- 
acterized as the " democracy of expectant capitalists." 
It borrowed something from the frontier. Its brutality, 
crudeness, coarseness, admiration for boorishness and 
ignorance, have been especially ascribed to the frontier, 
but they belong equally well to crude, competitive 
capitalism. These were the features that impressed 
such foreign visitors as Charles Dickens, 1 Harriet Mar- 
tineau, 2 and Alexander De Tocqueville. 3 

It was a society made up of units each of which be- 
lieved that it was destined to become rich and powerful. 
Its democracy was based upon the idea of equality in 
the struggle for office. Office was considered as a goal 
to be fought for. Public office was a private snap. 
Therefore it should be passed around. Hence the per- 
nicious idea of rotation in office that has cursed Ameri- 
can politics until the present time. 

The only way to secure office was to deceive a ma- 
jority of the voters. Hence the deification of majorities. 
The one idea which is met with over and over again in 
all the literature of the period is that the majority is 
always right. Whoever could get a majority of the 
votes was therefore right. The hardest way to get 
majorities being through appeals to reason, that method 
was neglected. 

Political machines, whose origin in Tammany Hall we 
have already traced, now spread from this germ until 
they controlled the whole national political field. The 



1 Charles Dickens, "American Notes." 

2 Harriet Martineau, "Society in America" (1837). 

3 Alexander De Tocqueville, "Democracy in America " (1833). 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1 830-1 850 211 



mad rush for wealth, the deification of success, the fierce 
competition of the early days of capitalism, combined to 
make politics a trade. 1 The workers could not, the 
madly competing little capitalists had no time to, enter 
politics directly. Besides, the whole end and aim of 
life being to make money, why should not politics be 
left to individual initiative in the pursuit of profit ? 

The national political convention, originating nomi- 
nally in a gathering of the "Anti-Masonic" party in 
1820, first became a national force when Jackson was 
nominated in 1828. By this time Van Buren, pupil of 
Aaron Burr and Tammany, had extended the system he 
had helped create in New York City first to the state 
and now to the nation. 

This machine existed for the purpose of getting ma- 
jorities, and through these the spoils of office. It did 
not try to teach the voters. The more ignorant they 
were, the easier to manage. Hence the exaltation of 
ignorance, the glorification of the " horny hand," that 
has been a part of the stock in trade of every demagogue 
to the present day. 

Principles are a distinct handicap to a political party 
working on these lines. Hence they are avoided as 
much as possible. Personalities are emphasized. 
Trickery, cabals, bribery, and intrigue are used within 
the party to determine nominations. After the nomi- 
nations are made, the majority are to be swayed by 
phrases, shibboleths, " blessed words," appeals to party 
solidarity, and principally by infusing the multitude with 
a sort of hypnotic enthusiasm and the mob spirit. 2 

1 M. Ostrogorski, " Democracy and the Organization of Political 
Parties," Vol. II, p. 78. 2 Ostrogorski, loc. cit., Chap. II. 



212 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



These methods were first seized upon by the Demo- 
cratic party. By their use Jackson and Van Buren were 
elected. Then others learned the lesson. Webster and 
New England, shut out of the Van Bur en- Jackson political 
combination, proceeded to manufacture a machine of their 
own, — the Whig party. It never had any principles. 1 
The whole country was so uniformly small-capitalist, 
save in the chattel-slave-owning localities, whose in- 
terests were as yet not challenged, that there was little 
on which politicians disagreed. 

But the Whigs had, from the start, greater resources 
than the Jackson and Van Buren combination. Henry 
Clay had quarreled with Jackson and gone over to the 
new party, and was its logical candidate. He was cast 
aside on the ground that, having a public record, he had 
enemies, and might not be the most available vote- 
getter. William H. Harrison was nominated instead. 
His only claim to fame was that he had been a general 
in a successful battle against the Indians some thirty 
yeais before. The machine then proceeded to make 
full use of the new methods of arousing enthusiasm. 
Enormous meetings were worked up, whose size was 
measured by acres, and not by the arguments presented. 
Monster processions passed through the streets of the 
cities, led by members of Congress who came from all 
parts of the Union for this purpose. An excellent phrase 
for the purpose of arousing the ignorant, unthinking 
vote was created for the Whigs when some opponent 

1 Charles H. Peck, "The Jacksonian System," p. 420: "John Ran- 
dolph once remarked that the principles of the Whig party were seven 
— five loaves and two fishes. This sarcasm contained much truth. 
The party was a heterogeneous composition." 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830-1 850 213 



sneeringly declared that Harrison would be content if he 
could sit in the door of a log cabin and drink hard cider. 
Although there is no evidence that he had ever so sat, 
and while he was, for that time, a comparatively wealthy 
man, this phrase was seized upon, Harrison became the 
" log-cabin candidate," and was swept into the highest 
office in the nation. 

Unfortunately for the Whigs, in their anxiety to 
secure a victory they had selected John Tyler for Vice- 
President. He was more nearly a Democrat than a 
Whig (another illustration of the disregard of principles 
for expediency); and when Harrison died after a few 
weeks in office, Tyler became President, and the Demo- 
crats were once more in places of power. Before Tyler's 
term had expired, the long-blurred class lines again 
became distinct in the field of politics. The new divi- 
sions were wholly different from the old ones, and were 
along the lines that were later to lead to Civil War. 

It would be a mistake to conclude that the democracy 
of this period was all a sham and a cover for scheming 
demagogues. It did strike heavy blows at all forms of 
privilege. It extended the suffrage and the public school 
system, and developed many things that had been set 
in motion by the labor movement of the preceding 
period. 

It was a time of strange, erratic, hysterical, and violent 
social movements. Antirent riots in New York secured 
the abolition of the remnants of the old patroon privileges 
that had remained from the days of Dutch control. 
The anarchistic competitive industrial atmosphere pro- 
duced extreme individualism in religion, resulting in 
hysterical revivals, and the growth of strange sects that 



214 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

were fiercely persecuted, as in the case of the Mormons. 
Political parties fought violently over strange issues. 
An anti-Masonic party threatened to capture several of 
the Northern states, and was a deciding influence in the 
local politics for several years. 

New England stood a little apart from this confusion. 
The old commercial class had lost its industrial and po- 
litical power. It was dying out in a blaze of intellectual 
fireworks, commonly known as the " Transcendental 
movement," because of its metaphysical base. To this 
movement belonged Emerson and Channing and Ripley 
and Thoreau, and several other of the brightest names 
in American literature. 

As in Europe, so here, this small competitive stage of 
capitalism was accompanied by a wave of communistic 
Utopian Socialism. It was during this period that 
Brook Farm was established, Brisbane was preaching 
the gospel of Fourier, and the followers of Cabet were 
preparing to build "Icarias" in the new world, with 
the assistance of local sympathizers. 

This communistic movement was a natural outgrowth 
of the combination of bourgeois democracy, New Eng- 
land liberalism in theology, metaphysical transcendental- 
ism, and the small-capitalist ideal of equality transmuted 
into transcendental phraseology. All of these things 
were most pronounced in their development in New 
England. Elsewhere there were disturbing currents 
that prevented the appearance of this intellectual and 
social efflorescence of the industrial trunk of American 
society. 

The whole tendency of bourgeois democracy and prim- 
itive communism is to level down, not up; to praise what 



THE YOUTH OF CAPITALISM — 1830- 1850 215 



is common to all, though it be base and degrading, rather 
than to aim at building up in the many what at first 
was the property of the few. 

This political power of the small bourgeoisie was now 
to be momentarily submerged in national affairs by the 
chattel-slave interests, then, after a period of develop- 
ment and growth and change, to seize the reins of social 
control, and wield them until it handed them over to 
its legitimate heirs in the line of social succession. 



CHAPTER XIX 



WHY THE CIVIL WAR CAME 

There are very definite reasons why the Civil War 
came at the exact time it did, and not a century earlier 
or a decade later. These reasons are not found either 
in the wickedness of chattel slavery, nor the growing 
moral consciousness of the North. It is probable that 
the slaves were as well, if not better, treated in i860 than 
at any time in the history of slavery. They were more 
valuable, and masters were more interested in their wel- 
fare. It is certain that the general moral conscience of 
the North had seldom been lower than in the years when 
competitive capitalism was gaining the mastery in Amer- 
ican industrial life. 

Sectional antagonism has always existed in the United 
States, and has many times led to threats of secession. 
New England proposed to secede because of opposition 
to the War of 181 2. South Carolina was ready to leave 
the Union to escape the tariff in 1830, although she had 
favored a tariff little more than ten years before. The 
West had repeatedly threatened secession and intrigued 
for an alliance with Spain, and had even taken steps to 
organize a trans-Allegheny empire when it felt itself 
oppressed by the Eastern states. It would be hard to 
find a state a majority of whose inhabitants had not 
at some time prior to i860 favored secession. Finally, 

216 



WHY THE CIVIL WAR CAME 



217 



the Abolitionists were, in the beginning, the most rabid 
secessionists. This fact should be ample proof that the 
Civil War was not caused by a fervent love for the ab- 
stract idea of union and a corresponding hatred of the 
principle of secession. 1 

A series of questions present themselves to any stu- 
dent of this period that are not answered by any of the 
conventional explanations of the cause of the war be- 
tween the North and the South. The explanation that 
it was caused by hostility to slavery fails to explain why 
Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison were 
mobbed in Boston, and why Lovejoy was lynched and 
Stephen A. Douglas sent to the United States Senate 
by the State that furnished Lincoln. Neither does it 

1 Pollard, "The Lost Cause," p. 52 : " In the North there was never 
any lack of rhetorical fervor for the Union; its praises were sung in 
every note of turgid literature, and it was familiarly entitled 'the glo- 
rious.' But the North worshipped the union in a very low commercial 
sense, it was a source of boundless profits; it was productive of tariffs 
and bounties, and it had been used for years as a means of sectional 
aggrandizement." The attitude of the Abolitionists is shown freely 
in their literature. No. n of the Anti-Slavery Tracts is "Disunion our 
Wisdom and Duty," by Rev. Charles E. Hodges. It is published by the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, and is an argument for dissolving the 
Union. Wendell Phillips' "Speeches, Lectures and Letters," Vol. I, p. 343 
et seq., containing his speech on "Disunion," delivered January, 1861, after 
secession had already taken place, contains these sentences : " ' The Lord 
reigneth ; let the earth rejoice. ' ' The covenant with death ' is annulled ; 
'the agreement with hell' is broken to pieces. The chain which has held 
the slave system since 1787 is parted. Thirty years ago northern aboli- 
tionists announced their purpose to seek the dissolution of the American 
union. Who dreamed that success would come so soon?" Later, in 
August, 1862, Phillips wrote a letter to the New York Tribune in which 
he said : "From 1843 to 1861 I was a disunionist . . . iumter changed 
the whole question. After that peace and justice roth forbade dis- 
union." 



2l8 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



help us to understand why slavery was not a political 
issue until it suddenly blazed into such a fierce fire, nor 
why the victory of the Republican party in the nation 
necessarily led to civil war when that party had never 
suggested abolition, and finally, why that war should have 
come in spite of the most earnest pledges of the govern- 
ment of Lincoln that slavery would not be disturbed. 

There is always a tendency to read the present into 
the past, until historians write as if the people of 1840 
acted with a full foreknowledge of the coming secession, 
Civil War, and emancipation, if not of negro enfranchise- 
ment and reconstruction. 

The attitude of the various sections of the country 
toward chattel slavery has always been determined 
directly by the dominant economic interests of the sec- 
tion in question. Massachusetts abolished slavery at 
an early date, and we have it on the authority of John 
Adams that : — ■ 

" Argument might have had some weight in the aboli- 
tion of slavery in Massachusetts, but the real cause 
was the multiplication of laboring white people, who 
would not longer suffer the rich to employ these sable 
rivals so much to their injury." 1 

1 A work by a writer using the name of "Barbarossa," entitled "The 
Lost Pr inciples of Sectional Equilibrium," published in i860, has this 
statement (p. 39, note) : "In the Congress of 1776 John Adams observed 
that the laumber of persons were taken by this article (on taxation) as 
the index of the wealth of the state, and not as subjects of taxation. 
That as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name you 
called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves. That in 
some countries V the laboring poor were called freemen; in others they 
were called slavey : but that the difference was imaginary only. What 
matters it whether a landlord employing ten laborers on his farm gives 
them annually as much as will buy the necessaries of life, or gives them 



WHY THE CIVIL WAR CAME 219 



At the time when Jackson was President there were a 
number of Abolitionist societies, but these were nearly 
all in the northern tier of slave-holding states, although 
one or more such societies could be found in every state 
in the Union except a few extreme Southern states, 
Indiana, and those of New England. 1 

About this time sentiment began to change, and a fierce 
hostility to Abolitionism arose, not only in the South, 
but through almost the entire North, with the exception 
of the Middle Atlantic states. 2 We find the cause of 
this in the fact that the value of the cotton crop raised 
by slave labor was increasing as perhaps few crops have 
ever increased. 3 New England was weaving this cotton, 
or carrying it to foreign ports, and the Middle West 
was supplying the food for the slaves and farm animals 
for the plantations upon which the cotton was raised. 
Only in the iron and steel manufacturing region and in 
the district dependent upon the Great Lakes was there 
developing a population deriving no material benefit 
from chattel slavery. 

So long as the various sections of the country were 
mutually complementary and not competitive, there 
was no deep-seated antagonism. "King Cotton" and 
"King Cotton Goods" had no quarrel until their inter- 
ests began to move in opposite directions. 

those necessaries at first hand?" Williams, "History of the Negro 
Race in America," p. 209, quotes from a report of a committee appointed 
by the Massachusetts Council in 1706, stating that negro slavery should 
be abolished because "white servants" were cheaper and more profitable 
to the colony. 

1 Albert Bushnell Hart, "Slavery and Abolition," p. 161. 

2 Ibid., pp. 245-246. 

3 Charles H. Peck, "The Jacksonian Epoch," p. 268. 



220 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



There was a series of these antagonistic interests 
that culminated about i860, any one of which might have 
produced a civil war, all of which could scarcely avoid 
causing an armed conflict. 

There was a conflict of territory. Both the wage 
system and chattel slavery require constant expansion. 
When the wave of population crossed the Mississippi 
and began to climb the eastern slope of the Rockies, a 
struggle arose over the question of which system should 
possess the level plains that lay on the border between 
the two social systems. Then came the " Nebraska 
War," the " Missouri Compromise," and " Bloody Kan- 
sas." The system of small capitalism required that land 
should be divided into small freeholds and distributed 
to settlers in the form of homesteads. Chattel slavery 
demanded auction sales of great strips for plantations. 

-The rise of the factory system and the coming of for- 
eign immigration, with the development of cities, all a 
part of the society based upon the wage system, created 
a social and individual psychology so wholly different 
from that based upon chattel slavery as to be sure to 
give rise to mutual distrust and hostility) This social 
system could not arise in the North until factory pro- 
duction and railroad transportation had given a unity 
to its social life. 

The South had to learn that chattel slavery was largely 
confined to the cotton belt, and that therefore it could 
never hope to rival in size and power the wage-slave 
territory, which had no narrqw geographical bonds. It 
was to try to force itself and its system into new territories 
until further expansion was almost impossible before it 
realized the existence of an " inevitable conflict." 



WHY THE CIVIL WAR CAME 



221 



Even more significant than any of these, although to 
a large extent growing out of them, was the antagonism 
arising from the attempt of the two social systems to 
use the national government in opposite ways for the 
furtherance of their respective interests. During the 
period prior to 1850 this need was not sharply felt by 
either section. This largely accounts for the political 
chaos, and utter lack of even a semblance of principles in 
national elections. Both the Whig and the Democrat 
parties, in the generation prior to the above date, had 
sought only to win offices, and had represented no clear 
class interests of national scope. 

As Northern capitalism grew stronger, wider in its 
scope, more definite in its objects, more united in its 
interests, more in need of national action to protect these 
interests both at home and abroad, it developed a polit- 
ical party to express those interests. That party 
found itself in sharp opposition to the interests of the 
system based upon chattel slavery. 

When that party obtained control of the national 
government, the chattel slave interests, realizing that 
no social system can hope to prosper within a govern- 
ment which it does not control, felt that secession was 
necessary. 

The growth of these divergent and antagonistic 
interests and their clash for power will be the subject 
of the next three chapters. 



CHAPTER XX 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 

Internally the industrial society based upon the 
plantation system and chattel slavery was near to a crisis 
by i860. This society, first established on the sea- 
board for the production of tobacco, indigo, and rice, 
maintained its general form as it moved across the 
country. In each successive stage of the westward 
march it followed the hunter and small farmer stage, 
and there was a brief struggle between these two systems 
for supremacy. 1 

Soil and climate determined the outcome of this con- 
flict. There was a definite belt of land where upland 
cotton could be raised. 2 Where this belt broke against 
the foot of the mountains, cotton and slavery stopped, 
and the whole character of the population changed. 3 
Because those engaged in the production of cotton in 
this comparatively small portion of the soil were the 
industrial, political, and social rulers of the South, it is 
the portion which is commonly referred to when the 
antebellum South is named. 

1 U. B. Phillips, "Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts," 

in American Historical Review, July, 1906. 

2 Wm. G. Brown, "The Lower South in American History," pp. 
25-26. 

3 W. A. Schaper, " Sectionalism and Representation in South Caro- 
lina," Am. Hist. Ass'n Rept., 1900, Vol. I, p. 253, et passim. 

222 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 223 



Although the statement is frequently made that the 
plantation system had remained unchanged for more 
than a century, 1 there were some important alterations 
in the generation preceding the Civil War. 

Chattel slavery and the plantation system could be 
maintained only in connection with an industry having 
certain characteristics. Such an industry must be 
extremely simple in its operation, requiring few pro- 
cesses and no complex machinery. Because slavery is 
applicable only to a " one-crop" system of agriculture, it 
demands an exhaustless supply of new and fertile lands 
that can be brought into cultivation as the old ones are 
exhausted. Because the slave represents a permanent 
investment on the part of the master, and must be sup- 
ported continuously, without regard to the continuity 
of industry, it is essential that employment be steady. 
Cotton cultivation with ginning occupied the slaves for 
nearly nine months in the year — longer than almost 
any other crop. 

The supplies in which the slave receives his wages 
should not be costly. Otherwise wage labor would be 
cheaper. The warm climate of the South relieved the 
master of the necessity of providing anything but the 
cheapest, coarsest clothing and food, and a miserable 
shelter. 

Slaves must be worked in large gangs under a common 
overseer. The cultivation and picking of cotton again 
made this possible. 2 

The same internal compulsion that leads to concentra- 

1 E. L. Bogart, "Economic History of the United States," p. 251. 

2 M. B. Hammond, "The Cotton Industry," Pub. Am. Econ. Ass'n, 
Vol. I, No. 1, pp. 34-66. 



224 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



tion in modern industry operated with the production 
of cotton. To this compulsion was added the fact that 
the extension of land ownership for the great planta- 
tions literally drove the defeated competitors of! the 
earth. As the system approached its conclusion, the 
number of its beneficiaries grew fewer and fewer, more 
and more powerful, more defiant and arrogant, more 
greedy for rulership. 

By i860, not more than half a million of the nine mil- 
lion Southern whites made an actual profit from chattel 
slavery. Out of this half million was further selected 
not more than ten thousand, who were the economic, 
social, and political rulers of the South. 1 The problem 
that confronted these few rulers was to maintain their 
dominant position under universal white suffrage. They 
were aided by the fact that the clergy and the profes- 
sional men were with them. This was due partly to the 
fact that the more successful members of this class usu- 
ally owned one or two slaves for personal service. This 

1 A. B. Hart, "Slavery and Abolition," p. 68 ; Edward Ingle, " South- 
ern Side Lights," p. 263 ; Brown, "The Lower South in American His- 
tory," p. 34. Hinton Rowan Helper, "The Impending Crisis," p. 146, 



gives this table for 1850 : — 

Holders of 1 slave 68,820 

Holders of 1 and under 5 105,683 

Holders of 5 and under 10 80,765 

Holders of 10 and under 20 54,595 

Holders of 20 and under 50 29,733 

Holders of 50 and under 100 6,196 

Holders of 100 and under 200 i,479 

Holders of 200 and under 300 187 

Holders of 300 and under 500 56 

Holders of 500 and under 1000 9 

Holders of 1000 and over 2 



Aggregate number of slaveholders in United States . . . 347>5 2 5 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 225 



created a class of social retainers who defended the 
interest of the ruling class. Always there is a large 
section of society that follows the leaders and defends 
the interests of those leaders more energetically than its 
own. 

The slave oligarchy in the South was well aware of 
the uncertainty of social rule by a minority, and com- 
forted themselves with the conclusion that "The pro- 
portion which the slaveholders of the South bear to the 
entire population is greater than that of the owners of 
land or houses, agricultural stock, state, bank, or other 
corporation securities elsewhere." 1 Until the verge 
of the Civil War the majority of the non-slave-owning 
whites were firm in their allegiance to their slave-own- 
ing rulers. Indeed, Von Hoist claims that "It was 
precisely the poorest and most abject whites who found 
the greatest satisfaction for their self-love in the thought 
that they were members of the privileged class. He 
who wished to span the broad gulf that separated them 
from the slaves, or was suspected of entertaining this 
wish, was their deadly enemy, for he threatened to expose 
them in all their neediness, defenseless and naked; he 
disputed their £ right' to the beggarly pomp that was due 
only to the deeper degradation of others ; and he there- 
fore trespassed upon their ' freedom.' " 2 

Representatives of the Southern ruling class were 
fond of taunting those who lived under the wage system 
with the security of a society based on chattel slavery 

1 J. D. B. DeBow, "The Non-Slave-Holders of the South," in DeBow's 
Review, 1861, p. 68. 

2 Von Hoist, "Constitutional History of the United States," Vol. I, 
PP- 349-35o. 

Q 



226 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



as compared with one depending upon hired laborers. 
They were continually boasting of the fact that chattel 
slavery made any uprising of the workers impossible. As 
one writer put it, " There is perhaps no solution of the 
great problem of reconciling the interests of labor and 
capital, so as to protect each from the encroachments 
and oppression of the other, so simple and effective as 
negro slavery. By making the laborer himself capital, 
the conflict ceases, and the interests become identical." 1 
But no such simple solution of class struggles is possible. 
The negro refused to be entirely contented in his slavery, 
and the imagination of the white owners, reading into 
the slave's mind an even greater unrest than existed, 
painted horrible pictures of impending slave insurrec- 
tions, until these became the social nightmare of the 
South. This fear, which kept the entire South in a state 
of hysterical apprehension, was a strong factor in creat- 
ing the sentiment for secession. Only under a national 
government controlled by slave owners could the South 
sleep secure in the feeling that all efforts to incite such 

1 Thomas R. R. Cobb, "Historical Sketch of Slavery " (1858), p. 214 ; 
Frank E. Chadwick, "Causes of the Civil War" (Am. Nation Series), 
pp. 41-42. E. Von Hoist, "Life of J. C. Calhoun," p. 175, quotes as 
follows from a speech of Calhoun's: "I fearlessly assert that the existing 
relations between the two races in the South . . . forms the most solid 
and desirable foundation on which to rear free and stable political insti- 
tutions. It is useless to disguise the fact. There is, and always has 
been, in an advanced stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between 
labor and capital. The condition of society in the South exempts us 
from the disorders and dangers resulting from this conflict ; and explains 
why it is that the condition of the slaveholding states has been so much 
more stable and quiet than that of the North. The advantages of the 
former in this respect will become more and more manifest if left undis- 
turbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth 
and numbers." 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 227 



insurrections would be sternly suppressed. We now know 
that this terror was largely self-inspired. The negroes 
did not rise when opportunity offered. 

On the other hand, the poor whites were showing un- 
mistakable signs of dissatisfaction with the rule of the 
plantation barons. The propertyless whites were in a 
most helpless and abject state of industrial, social, and 
political dependence. They were permitted no share 
in the government, were shut out from the industrial 
life of the South, and were the despised hangers-on in the 
social world. To the north they saw the members of 
their class attaining to social and political rulership, 
and they began to move beneath the foundations of 
Southern society. 

By 1850 DeBow, the great literary spokesman of 
Southern sentiment, was beginning to urge upon the 
plantation owners the necessity of finding some employ- 
ment for the poor whites. "The great mass of our poor 
white population," he says, "begin to understand that 
they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some 
of the sympathy which falls upon the suffering. They 
are fast learning that there is an almost infinite world 
of industry opening before them, by which they can 
elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness 
and ignorance to competence and intelligence. 77 is 
this great upbearing of our masses that we are to fear, 
so far as our institutions are concerned." 1 

In 1856 George M. Weston published a book entitled 
"The Poor Whites of the South." He described the 
industrial and physical and mental degradation of this 

1 Editorial in DeBow 's Review (1850), Vol. VIII, p. 25. Italics in 
original. 



228 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

class, as well as their political insignificance. "I have 
been for twenty years a reader of southern newspapers, 
and a hearer of Congressional debates," he says, "but 
in all that time, I do not recollect ever to have seen or 
heard these non-slave-holding whites referred to by 
southern gentlemen as constituting any part of what they 
call ' The South.' " 1 

Finally, in 1856, there came a book which voiced the 
interests and the demands of this class in such thunderous 
tones that it shook the weakening pillars of Southern 
society like reeds, and had very much more to do with 
bringing on the Civil War than did the much talked- 
about "Uncle Tom's Cabin." This book was Hinton 
Rowan Helper's "The Impending Crisis." 

Reading this book to-day, it is difficult to understand 
its effect when published. It is composed largely of 
cold statistical proof that chattel slavery was hindering 
the progress of Southern society. Page after page of 
comparisons between the North and the South are given. 
In every instance the North has far outstripped the 
South in wealth. This tempting vision of the flesh- 
pots of profits from wage labor was dangled before the 
eyes of the non-slaveholding whites of the South; and the 
burden of the book, though never expressed directly, 
is: "But for chattel slavery you might be enjoying the 
things upon which your fellow little bourgeoisie in the 
North are fattening." Helper shows how much faster 
Northern cities have grown, how much more valuable 
is Northern land, both agricultural and urban, how in the 
North more railroads are built, more patents obtained, 
more ships are sailed; how, in short, there were more 
1 George M. Weston, "The Poor Whites of the South " (1856)., 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYS'J^M 229 



of all the things that are the gods of the class o-f little 
capitalists to which the poor whites longed to belong, 
and to which, by the laws of social evolution, they should 
have been tending. 

Helper taunts the non-slaveholders with the contempt 
in which they are held by the slave owners. 1 He §ays 
of the poor whites: "They have never yet had any pt rt 
or lot in framing the laws under which they live. There 
is no legislation except for the benefit of slavery anc 
slaveholders. ... To all intents and purposes, they are"' 
disfranchised, and outlawed, and the only privilege 
extended to them is a shallow and circumscribed par- 
ticipation in the political movements that usher slave- 
holders into office." 2 He shows them how mercilessly 
the great plantations are devouring the small farms and 
leaving the country a wilderness when the soil has been 
exhausted. 3 He tabulates the offices controlled by the 
slavocracy since the foundation of the government, and 
shows that during nearly all of that time the presidency, 
vice-presidency, speakership of the House, Supreme 
Court, and the Cabinet have been rilled with representa- 
tives of this small class of slave owners. 4 

From first to last he bases his case upon the material 
interest of the class he is seeking to arouse, and points 
that the way out is to use political power in the further- 
ance of class interests, exactly as the slaveholders have 
been doing. 

The publication of this book exposed the Achilles , 
heel of the South. It was greeted with a perfect explo- 
sion of denunciation. Southern postmasters refused to 

1 Hinton Rowan Helper, "The Impending Crisis," p. 41. 

J Ibid., p. 42. 3 Ibid., pp. 57-58. 4 Ibid., pp. 307-317. 



230 OCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

deliver it. Great bonfires were made of such copies 
as could be found in the South. Ownership of a copy 
in a Southern state was to invite mob violence. 1 Because 
John Sherman was reported to have contributed to a 
func for its circulation, he was defeated for the speaker- 
ship,- of the House of Representatives. 2 

/fcnere was but one way to meet this situation, and 
retain the allegiance of the poor whites for slavery. That 
was to introduce capitalism into the South alongside 
of the plantation system. This sounds almost grotesque. 
> It was the only hope of escape, and was so recognized 
by the class-conscious slave owners. 

The most strenuous efforts were made to introduce 
manufacturing. "In Alabama . . . there was a sort 
of frenzy over railroads in the early fifties." 3 State 
and local societies and " Institutes for the Promotion 
of Art, Mechanical Ingenuity, Industry, and Manu- 
factures in the South " were formed. Before the South 
Carolina society of this name one William Gregg made 
an impassioned plea to the South not to content itself 
"to stand in the same relation to the Northern States 
and the balance of the manufacturing world, that 
Ireland, poor Ireland, does to England — hewers of 

1 John Spencer Bassett, " Anti-Slave Leaders of North Carolina," in 
Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science, 

P- IS- 

2 Ibid., pp. 17-18. 

3 Wm. G. Brown, "The Lower South in American History," pp. 
95-96. A few years ago press reports stated that Hinton R. Helper 
was found dead on a bench in a Washington, D.C., park. There is a 
grim irony in the fact that the man who was largely responsible for the 
vast financial and political power of American capitalists should have 
died an outcast. 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 231 



wood and drawers of water." 1 He proceeds to urge 
the establishment of manufactures for the especial benefit 
of a large portion of our "poor white people, who are 
wholly neglected, and are suffered to while away an 
existence but one step in advance of the Indian of the 
forest." 2 Yet while he is planning an opportunity for 
these poor whites to become wageworkers, he is not 
blind to the fact that the presence of chattel slavery 
will permit the plantation class to retain their social 
leadership, since "capital will be able to control labor, 
even in manufacture with whites, for blacks can always 
be resorted to in case of need." 3 

These efforts to establish manufactures were not 
wholly in vain. Numerous factories using either white 
wage or negro chattel slave labor were running in the 
years just prior to the Civil War, and were greatly 
boasted by the Southern spokesmen. 4 But the two 
systems of industry could not exist side by side. The 
demands which they made upon government were dif- 
ferent. The social classes which they raised to power 
were antagonistic. The effort to create manufactures 
with wage labor alongside of plantation agriculture 
operated by chattel slaves was only a sign of the dis- 
integration of the latter system. 

1 DeBow's Review, Vol. II (1851), Address of William Gregg before 
the South Carolina Institute for the Promotion of Art, Mechanical 
Ingenuity, Industry, and Manufactures in South Carolina and the 
South, p. 127. 

2 Ibid., p. 135. 3 Ibid., p. 130. 

4 Ingle, "Southern Side Lights," pp. 75-83; DeBow, "Industrial 
Resources of the Southern and Western States," Supplement to DeBow's 
Review, Vol. II (1846), pp. 230-231 ; ibid., p. 332 ; Thomas P. Kettel, 
"Southern Wealth and Northern Profits," pp. 53-62/ 



232 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The germs of disintegration were within the very 
elements that seemed to indicate the greatest prosperity 
for the chattel slave system of production. The friends 
of this system rested their case upon the domination of 
cotton. As the demand for cotton increased, the slave 
system seemed more firmly entrenched. 

The following table gives the principal statistical 
facts in the growth of the Southern industrial system : — 



Year 


Value of all 
Products 


Value of Cotton 


Number of 
Slaves 


Value of all 
Products 
per Slave 


180O 


$14,385,000 


$5,252,000 


893,041 


$l6.IO 


l8lO 


28,255,000 


15,108,000 


1,191,364 


I9-50 


l820 


37.934,111 


26,309,000 


1,543,688 


24.63 


183O 


45,225,838 


34,084,883 


2,009,053 


22.00 


184O 


92,292,260 


74,640,307 


2,487,355 


37-n 


185O 


130.556,050 


101,334,616 


3^79,509 


43-5i 


185I 


165,084,517 




3,200,000 


5^90 



At first sight this would seem to show swiftly rising 
prosperity for the slave owners. But there is an inherent 
contradiction in chattel slavery, as within the competitive 
system, and this was the first time in the history of society 
that chattel slavery, on a large scale, had entered into 
the competitive system. This is the peculiarity : the 
increased productivity of the slave, or the increased 
profits from his employment, are constantly capitalized 
and absorbed in the ever increasing value of the slave. 1 

1 Daniel R. Goodloe, "Is it Expedient to Introduce Slavery into 
Kansas?" p. 50: "The cultivation of land by slave labor requires a 
five-fold greater outlay of capital than is necessary with the use of free 
labor. The employer of slave labor must not only have the land, houses, 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 233 



Since the yearly earnings in the most profitable indus- 
try where slaves were employed were thus capitalized 
and applied to the price of all slaves, the price rose in 
a most astonishing manner. This tendency was still 
further aggravated by the restrictions upon the foreign 
slave trade, which prevented the importation of any save 
those that could be smuggled past the watchful revenue 
cruisers. Consequently the price rose from less than 
$150 in 1808 to between two and four thousand dollars for 
field hands in the years immediately preceding the war. 1 

At these prices only the largest plantations, working 
the slaves in the most effective manner upon the richest 
lands, raising the most profitable crops, could survive. 
It had become a common saying that the slave owner 
grew more cotton to get more money to buy more slaves, 
to raise more cotton, and so on in an endless and ever 
rising spiral. 

This development, combined with the exhaustive 
one-crop system of farming, drove the slave owner on 
toward the extreme south and west. A moving picture 

fences, cattle, provisions, etc., which, the employing of free labor requires, 
but in addition he must own a slave, worth from $800 to $1000, for every 
twenty acres of land which he proposes to cultivate." 

'Kettel, "Southern Wealth and Northern Profits," p. 171. "The 
Documentary History of American Industrial Society," Vol. II, pp. 
73-74, quotes from the Milledgeville, Ga., Federal Union of Jan. 17, 
i860, as follows: "Men are borrowing money at exorbitant rates of 
interest to buy negroes at exorbitant prices. . . . The old rule of 
pricing a negro by the price of cotton by the pound — that is to say, if 
cotton is worth twelve cents, a negro man is worth $1200, if at fifteen 
cents, then $1500 — does not seem to be regarded. Negroes are 25 
per cent higher now with cotton at ten and one-half cents than they 
were two or three years ago, when it was worth fifteen and sixteen cents. 
Men are demented upon the subject. A reverse will surely come." 
M. B. Hammond, "The Cotton Industry," pp. 50-51. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



of the black population of the South and its white owners 
during the last ten years of chattel slavery would suggest 
some thick dark fluid flowing toward the Gulf of Mexico. 1 
Thus the South became divided into the " slave-using " 
and the " slave-breeding " states. Virginia and Mary- 
land were the two great sources of the slave supply, 
from whence the "coffles" of slaves were gathered by 
the buyers to be shipped to the sugar and cotton plan- 
tations further south. 2 It was not profitable to keep 
slaves in the border states except for breeding purposes, 
and there was somewhat of a sentiment against this. 
Therefore the number of slaves in the border states 
steadily decreased in numbers. 

There were at least two elements of disintegration 
added by this movement to the already crumbling fabric 
of chattel slavery. The conflict of interest which always 
exists between buyers and sellers arose between these 
two sections of the South. This showed itself in the 
agitation for the reopening of the foreign slave trade on 
the part of the slave-using states. This was urged in 
the hope of lowering the price of slaves and thereby 
preventing the collapse of slavery by the absorption 
of all profits in the values of the laborers. 3 It was also 
urged that such a reduction in price would enable the 
chattel slave owners to compete with the wage system 
in the settlement of new territory to the west. 4 

1 James Baker, essay on American Slavery in North American Review, 
October, 1851, p. 12 ; Hammond, "The Cotton Industry," pp. 50-51. 

2 James F. W. Johnson, "Notes on North America" (1851), Vol. II, 
PP- 354-355- 

3 George Fitzhugh, " The Wealth of the North and South," in De- 
Bow's Review, Vol. XXIII (1857), p. 592. 

4 Ibid., p. 594 : "The revival of the African slave trade, the reduction 
in the price of negroes, and the increase of their numbers, will enable us 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 235 

When this proposition to reopen the slave trade was 
brought up in one of the many trade conventions that 
were held in the South during the years from 1850 to 
i860, the opposition of the slave-breeding states, who 
were profiting by the high price of -slaves, was so great 
that the resolution on this point was finally dropped 
" because the resolution was impolitic as affecting the 
interests of such states as Virginia, Kentucky, Mis- 
souri, and North Carolina." 1 

Another great weakness of the chattel slave and plan- 
tation system is found in the fact that it was so completely 
dependent upon other societies. It was always a debtor 
society, unable to market its crop without the ships and 
mills of New and old England. It had but one crop to 
bring to market, and brought this in the raw stage. Then, 
as now, the greatest profits went to those who controlled 
the later stages of production. Whenever the interests 
of these two stages of society conflicted, the advantage 
was all with the one representing the later industrial 
epoch. One of the points where this clash came was on 
the tariff question, and the first and some of the sharpest 
conflicts between the capitalist North and the semi- 
feudal South were on this question. 2 Just why this 

successfully to contend in the establishment of new territories with the 
vast emigration from the North." 

1 Ingle, "Southern Side Lights," p. 250. 

2 E. Von Hoist, "Life of J. C. Calhoun," pp. 75-76 ; An American, 
"Cotton is King," pp. 64-81. On p. 67 of this work, which was one of 
the most commonly circulated books by the defenders of the South, 
the position of that section is summed up as follows: "If they [the 
Southern planters] could establish free trade, it would insure the American 
market to foreign manufacturers ; secure foreign markets for their lead- 
ing staple; repress home manufactures; force a larger number of the 
northern men into agriculture; multiply the growth and diminish the 



236 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



clash was particularly sharp about i860 will be pointed 
out in the next chapter. 

The absolute need for territorial expansion by a one- 
crop society was bringing the South into another cul 
de sac. With the national government completely in its 
control, it was able to force the annexation of Texas 
and a large extent of other territory after an almost 
unprovoked war with Mexico. 1 At the same time a 
large amount of territory in the northwest to which the 
title of the United States was fairly clear was surrendered 
almost without a protest. 2 

The bounds of possible expansion were soon reached, 
so far as continental America was concerned. Much 
of the land which was obtained in the war with Mexico 
was closed to chattel slavery by the ever encroaching 
wage labor society to the north. The South in des- 
peration turned to the tropical countries and islands 
further south. They talked in terms of a " manifest 
destiny" that was driving them on to the possession 
of Cuba and the valley of the Amazon. 3 Envious eyes 

price of provisions ; feed and clothe their slaves at lower rates ; produce 
their cotton for a third or fourth of former prices ; rival all other countries 
in its cultivation; monopolize the trade in the article throughout the 
whole of Europe ; and build up a commerce and a navy that would make 
us the rulers of the seas." 

1 E. Von Hoist, "Life of J. C. Calhoun," pp. 220-259, 237: 
" Because the slave-holding states thought their peculiar institution en- 
dangered by the existence of an independent free state, it was declared 
to be the 'imperative duty' and a 'sacred obligation' of the United 
States, imposed by their constitutional compact, to absorb that state 
into the Union in order to prevent the abolition of slavery in it." 

2 Ibid., p. 267 et seq. 

3 DeBow's Review, Vol. XVII, p. 280. Ibid., Vol. XV, p. 263, contains 
a report of a convention held at Memphis in 1853, where a long resolution 
on the opening of the Amazon, was adopted, beginning as follows: 



THE CRISIS IN THE CHATTEL SLAVE SYSTEM 237 



were cast upon Cuba at this time, and the descriptions 
of the atrocities of Spanish rule in that island read very 
much like the writings which appeared upon that same 
subject almost fifty years later, when Northern capital- 
ism was, in its turn, struggling for expansion. 1 

All its efforts in this direction were in vain. The hold 
of the South upon the national government was slipping 
away, and it was impossible to use that government for 
another war of conquest. 

Internally the chattel slave system was devouring itself; 
externally it was being strangled for lack of room to ex- 
pand. The inherent contradictions that arise within every 
industrial system based upon exploitation were rending 
it asunder, while a rival industrial system was proving 
superior in the great struggle for existence by which social 
systems are tried out in the laboratory of history. 

At such a critical time possession of the national 
government was essential to even a temporary prolonga- 
tion of existence. When that government passed into 
the hands of its rival in the battle for survival, the 
Southern slavocracy tried to secede and establish a 
government it could control. 2 

"Resolved, that the interests of commerce, the cause of civilization, 
and the mandates of high heaven, require the Atlantic slopes of South 
America to be subdued and replenished." Wilson, "History of the 
American People," Vol. IV, pp. 173-174. 

1 Henry Wilson, "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in 
America," Vol. II, pp. 608-614; DeBow's Review, Vol. XVIII, pp. 
163-167 and 3°5-3i3- 

2 Brown, "The Lower South in American Hislory," p. 83: "The 
struggle for ascendency was, in fact, a struggle for existence. . . . The 
lower South was from the beginning under a necessity either to control 
the national government or radically to change its own industrial and 
social system." 



CHAPTER XXI 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 

While Southern society was approaching the final 
stages of its development and displaying signs of inevi- 
table disintegration, Northern society was leaping into 
the vigorous strength of adult power. The industrial 
revolution that brought the factory system, the growth 
of great cities, the annihilation of space, the piling up of 
vast profits, was in full swing. 

The railroad had passed the experimental stage me- 
chanically, financially, and politically. It was now ready 
to work the social transformation of which it was capable. 
Until about 1845 railroads were built simply to unite 
two neighboring cities, or as links in a canal system, or 
to bring some specific product to market. Each impor- 
tant city was a "terminal" of one or more roads connect- 
ing it with some comparatively near-by place. There 
was no idea of a general system binding a whole section 
or sections of the country together. 1 

The total mileage had been steadily increasing. There 
were 23 miles in 1830, 2818 in 1840, and 9021 in 1850. 
When these were welded into systems covering large 
sections and giving to these sections an industrial and 
social unity they had not and could not have known 
before, the mileage leaped to 30,635 by i860. 2 

1 Emory R. Johnson, "American Railway Transportation," p. 25. 

2 A. S. Bolles, "Industrial History of the United States," p. 635. 

238 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 



The North had far outstripped the South in the extent 
of its railroad building. According to Helper the "free" 
states had 17,855 miles of railroad in 1857, while the 
"slave" states contained but 6859 miles. 1 Yet because 
the South controlled the national government, that sec- 
tion had been especially favored in the matter of land 
grants. The system of giving land from the public do- 
main to corporations with which to build railroads that 
should remain in private hands was begun with the grant 
to the Illinois Central in 1850. Although this road was 
located in a wage labor state, it was intended to benefit 
the South by linking the upper Mississippi Valley with 
the Gulf of Mexico. 2 

This use of the national government for internal im- 
provements was one of the points where the interests of 
the North and the South clashed. The South did not 
favor internal improvements in any whole-hearted man- 
ner, and when it did favor any specific improvement it 
demanded that it be located in the South. 3 The Pacific 
railway could not be built while the South controlled the 
national government. 4 There was a feature of the dis- 
cussion of the Pacific Railway that showed how the North 
was beginning to shape the national mind. Until about 
1850, in all discussions of a railway across the continent, 
it was taken for granted that it was to be built by the 
national government, and be owned by that government. 
By 1855 the idea of individual or corporate ownership 

1 H. R. Helper, "The Impending Crisis," p. 285. 

2 A. S. Bolles, loc. cit., p. 643. 

3 John P. Davis, "The Union Pacific Railway," Chap. Ill; Brown, 
" The Lower South in American History," p. 68. 

4 Davis, loc. cit., pp. 66-67. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



was accepted in Congressional discussions with almost 
equal unanimity. 1 

Along the railroad went the telegraph, completing the 
work of solidifying the life of the industrial sections. 
The first telegraph line was built from Washington to 
Baltimore in 1844. It was extended to New York the 
same year, and to Boston the next. By 1850 there were 
22,000 miles of telegraph in operation, and by i860 this 
had grown to 50,000, and the Western Union had laid the 
foundation of its monopoly. 

It was the telegraph that really made possible an ex- 
tensive railroad system. It is hard to-day to think of 
railroad operation without some method of communica- 
tion independent of and faster than the trains themselves. 

The telegraph annihilated space in the transmission of 
information, and made it possible for a whole section, and 
later for a whole nation and the whole world, to think 
together. It made bargaining and the carrying on of 
financial transactions between widely separated parties 
possible, and revolutionized systems of commercial pro- 
cedure that had endured for centuries. 2 It created the 

1 Davis, loc. cit., pp. 66-67. 

2 "Memorial History of New York/' Vol. Ill, p. 414: "The tele- 
graph, which had come fairly into use by 1847, revolutionized the methods 
of business. Heretofore it had been the custom of the merchants of 
Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and all the larger interior 
towns, to visit New York once a year and select their stock of goods for 
the coming year. Now all this was changed. The development of the 
railroad and the telegraph made it possible for the merchants of the in- 
terior to order any particular goods wanted, and to receive them within 
a day or two, so that the great wholesale houses, instead of carrying 
a large and miscellaneous stock of goods, began to limit themselves to a 
single line, and their customers in ordering would divide their orders 
among perhaps a dozen houses." 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 241 

daily newspaper as a medium for the reception and dis- 
semination of the events of the world without delay. 
Here, again, it was the North whose solidarity was 
strengthened and social mentality unified and quickened 
by the telegraph. 

One method of communication was still in an ex- 
tremely imperfect state, and was showing little signs 
of improvement. This was the postal service. Mails 
were carried only in the daytime. Not until i860 do 
we read in a report of the postmaster-general of an 
" experiment" with a night mail between New York and 
Boston. 

The systematic and complicated schemes of distribu- 
tion, which are the foundation of present postal systems, 
were as yet un thought of. All distributing was done in the 
post-offices. No one had suggested a railway mail car 
for distribution en route. If the reader will try to work 
out a system of mail distribution on this plan to include 
18,000 post-offices, the number that existed in 1850, he 
will gain some idea of the confusion and delay that 
prevailed. Separate pieces of mail would be received 
in each large city for nearly all of these post-offices. To 
sort this mail properly would require 18,000 mail sacks. 
This being impossible, all the mail going in one direction 
was sent in one sack. As this arrived at each office en 
route, it was opened, the contents taken out, sorted for 
the letters belonging to this particular office, and then the 
remainder of the mail returned to the sack to continue 
on its journey. 

By the late fifties this plan had become absolutely 
unworkable, and it had been supplemented by another 
only a trifle less clumsy. Several larger cities were 

E 



242 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



designated as " distributing centers" for all offices 
near by. 

Each " distributing center" had its separate pouch 
containing the mail for all contiguous offices. The mail 
was re-sorted at the " center" for the smaller offices. 
Soon "subsidiary distributing offices" had to be selected, 
so that mail was often stopped at two or three places for 
distribution. Two towns but a few miles apart, but 
within different " distributing centers," were sometimes 
compelled to wait weeks for the mail to go from one to 
the other, although passengers were regularly making the 
trip in a few hours. ' 

The cost was very high for this inefficient service. 
Until 1845 rates for the minimum weight of letters was 
as follows : under 30 miles, six cents; 30 to 80 miles, 
ten cents ; 80 to 150 miles, 12^ cents ; 150 to 400 miles, 
i8f cents, and over 400 miles, 25 cents. While these 
rates lasted, many of the most important features of 
modern industry were impossible. They tended very 
strongly to the development of sectional as contrasted 
with national solidarity. 

Population, transportation, and industry had now 
reached a stage where it was profitable for private 
enterprise to enter into competition with the post-office 
in the carrying of small parcels. Accordingly, William 
Harnden began what has since developed into the ex- 
press business by carrying parcels between New York and 
Boston in 1839. The Adams Express Company grew out 
of this undertaking the next year, and the American Ex- 
press Company came into existence one year later. The 
powerful Wells Fargo, that was to play so large a part in 
the control of Western trade, and especially of the traffic 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 



incident to the discovery of gold in California, was 
founded in 185 2. 1 The United States Express Company 
started two years later. The express business is pecul- 
iarly American. In all other countries the functions 
performed by express companies are divided between 
the freight departments of the railroads and the post- 
office. This would undoubtedly have been the case in 
this country, had it not been for the fact that the demand 
for this service came at a time when the idea of laissez 
faire and individual initiative ruled industrial and 
political life. 

At the very time when the mails were being changed 
from stagecoach to railroads, and when the government 
was beginning its policy of giving the land with which 
railroads were to be built, the express companies entered 
upon the scene and absorbed the most profitable portion 
of the mail business. Railroad charges prevented the 
post-office from entering into any effective competition 
with the express companies. Caught thus between the 
upper and the nether millstone, the post-office started 
upon that long career of deficits that have since served 
to hamper its operation. 

The officials who had charge of the post-office at this 
time were not blind to the dangers that threatened the 
postal system through the invasion of its profitable 
business by the express companies. Postmaster-General 
Wickliffe, who was in office from 1841 to 1845, protested 
in almost every report that the express companies were 
violating the constitutional provision which gave the 
government a monopoly of the postal business, and that 
they were doing this only over the short hauls and in the 

1 A. L. Stimpson, "History of the Express Business," pp. 34-79. 



244 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



most thickly settled districts, leaving the unprofitable 
business to the government. 1 His protests went un- 
heeded, save in so far as they may have led Congress to 
the reduction of the rates of postage in 1845 to fi ye cents 
per half ounce for less than 300 miles and ten cents for 
all distances over 500 miles. 

By this time a movement had been started by Sir 
Rowland Hill in England for "penny postage." The 
essential point of this idea was not the penny unit, but 
the abolition of the distance charge; and in 1851 the rate 
for letters in the United States was reduced to three cents, 
without regard to distance. 

We can hardly think of a letter and postal service 
apart from postage stamps, yet the adhesive stamp was 
first authorized in the United States in 1847, an d made 
compulsory in 1856. In 1854 the system of registry for 
valuable letters was introduced. 

The postal service still lacked railroad distribution, 
money orders, low newspaper postage, free delivery, and 
several other things prominent at the present time. 
It was too imperfect to build up national solidarity, 
but was eminently fitted to bring much closer together 
the people of considerable sections of the nation. 

Since the need of communication was much more 
strongly felt, and brought much greater material benefits 
to an industrial than an agricultural nation, nearly all 
steps looking to the improvement of the post-office met 
with the indifference or active opposition of the chattel 
slave- owning cotton raisers of the agricultural South. 

1 Reports of Postmaster-General, 1841, 1845 ; and opinion of Attorney- 
General, Nov. 13, 1843 ; also report of Congressional Committee in Feb- 
ruary, 1844. 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 245 



The factory system, now firmly established, was ex- 
tending and developing in all directions. Inventions, 
always the index of mechanical progress, were multiply- 
ing. Up to 1840 there had been 11,908 patents issued. 
This was the result of half a century. 31,523 patents 
were issued during the next twenty years. In other 
words, man's control over nature, and the accompanying 
transformation in all social relations, was almost three 
times as great in these twenty as in the previous fifty years. 

These inventions were largely basic and revolutionary 
in their character. Elias Howe made the first sewing 
machine for which a patent was granted in 1846. Mc- 
Cormick patented the reaper in 1831, but never was able 
to make as many as five hundred in one year until 1845. 
In 1844 Goodyear laid the foundation of the present 
rubber industry by his discovery of the process of vul- 
canizing rubber. Iron rails were first rolled in this coun- 
try in 1844, but only as an experiment. Even in 1855, 
when the Cambria Iron Company of Johnstown, Penn- 
sylvania, rolled the first thirty-foot rails, it found no mar- 
ket for them. But by i860 more than 200,000 tons of 
iron rails were manufactured in the United States. The 
center of this industry was now definitely located in the 
Pittsburg district, and it was here that the growth was 
most rapid. 

A revolutionary change had taken place in the produc- 
tion of iron. In 1 839 anthracite coal was first successfully 
used in a blast furnace. By 1855 more iron was being 
produced with coal than with wood. 1 Hitherto iron had 

1 James M. Swank, "The Manufacture of Iron in All Ages," Chap. 
XXXV; A. S. Bolles, "Industrial History of the United States," 
pp. 202-204. 



246 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

been made with charcoal, and the furnace must be kept 
close to the ever retreating forest. Now the elements in 
its manufacture were fixed as to location for long terms 
of years. Hereafter the location of the iron and steel 
industry was to depend upon the relation of four items : 
ore, coal, limestone, and the market for the finished 
product. 

In commerce, too, this was a time of swift upward 
development. By 1846 the tremendous tonnage of the 
Napoleonic days was equaled, and for the next ten years 
it shot up at an unparalleled rate, until American ships had 
a tonnage of more than 2,300,000, or nearly three times 
as great as at any period prior to 1845. 1 These were the 
days of the famous "clipper" ships, the fastest sailing 
vessels ever launched. 

Three inventions came in the years 1836 to 1838 that 
sounded the doom of American maritime supremacy. 
These were the use of iron in shipbuilding, the applica- 
tion of steam to ocean vessels, and the invention of the 
screw propeller. 2 The cheaper iron of England was 
soon to drive the wooden ships of America from the 
ocean. The shipbuilding trade declined on American 
soil. This fatal competition had not progressed far 
enough prior to the Civil War to produce any social 
effects of importance. In i860 shipping was still in a 
stage of great prosperity. 

The spread of railroads had not prevented a swift in- 
crease in the amount of traffic on the inland waterways. 
While the efforts to use steam in transatlantic travel 

1 Coman, "Industrial History of the United States," pp. 228-229. 

2 Bogart, "Economic History of the United States," pp. 206-207; 
Bolles, "Industrial History of the United States," pp. 59i~595- 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 247 



were unsatisfactory, because the imperfect machinery 
made it necessary to use nearly all the storage capacity 
of the ship for fuel, no such difficulty existed on the 
rivers and lakes of the Mississippi Valley, where fuel grew 
thick upon every bank. A type of steamer new to the 
history of shipbuilding was constructed for Mississippi 
River traffic. It was a broad, shallow craft, built low to 
the water's edge, but with two or more decks above, and 
great carrying capacity. So many of these were built 
that by 1856 the steam tonnage of the Mississippi 
River equaled that of the whole empire of Great 
Britain. 1 

The most important development of inland water 
transportation in this epoch was connected with the great 
system of inland lakes at the head of the Mississippi 
Valley, with their outlet to the East into the Atlantic. 
These Great Lakes were the highway that bound to- 
gether a group of states with a common industrial and 
social structure. This group was to constitute the pivot 
upon which American politics were to make their great- 
est turn. The tonnage of vessels on this inland waterway, 
the greatest on the globe, grew from 75,000 in 1840 to 
215,787 in 1850, and to nearly 500,000 in i860. 2 

Yet it must not be forgotten that fast as all forms of 
inland water navigation were growing, railroad transpor- 
tation was leaping forward at a far faster rate. By i860 
it was estimated that two thirds of the total internal 
trade moved over iron rails. 3 

The wave of progress that was working such changes in 

1 Bolles, "Industrial History of the United States," pp. 588-595. 

2 Bogart, "Economic History of the United States," pp. 209-210. 

3 Ibid. 



248 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



manufacture and commerce was lifting the foundations 
of that greatest and oldest and most immovable of in- 
dustries — agriculture. Had the Roman Cincinnatus 
been raised from his sleep of centuries and placed upon an 
American farm in 1830, he would have seen few imple- 
ments whose use he would not have been able to under- 
stand. The greatest change would perhaps have been 
the addition of a long and crooked handle and a number 
of fingers to an elongated blade of a sickle, by which 
process the grain cradle had been evolved. But farm 
labor was still hand labor. Almost no use was made of 
animals save for hauling loads and pulling the plow. A 
new era was at hand. 

"The decade 1850 to i860 was a period when American 
inventors were earnestly endeavoring to improve all 
classes of farm implements and machinery. It witnessed 
the beginning of the practical use of horse-driven machin- 
ery for cutting and threshing grain, the first of a series 
of changes that subsequently revolutionized the methods 
of work on all farms in the United States outside of those 
devoted to cotton-growing." 1 

The reason for this is found largely in the fact that 
this was the period of the opening up of the first broad 
strip of prairie embracing Illinois, Iowa, and eastern 
Kansas and Nebraska. Here it was possible to use 
many tools which could not be employed upon the 
stony, stumpy farms of New England and the Ohio 
Valley. 

Factory methods in the production of agricultural 
machinery were impossible before the railroad system 
of the country was sufficiently developed to place a large 
1 Census 1900, Vol. V, Pt. I, p. xxvi. 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 249 

number of farms within reach of a single central point. 1 
The application of agricultural machinery also requires 
a market for a crop in the raising of which such machinery 
can be used. When the railroads and the Great Lakes 
and canals opened a highway for the grain trade, this 
third condition was fulfilled. The first shipment of 
grain ever made from Chicago was in 1838, and the 
total amount sent out that year was 78 bushels. By 
1845 more than a million bushels passed through this 
same port on the way to the markets of the world. In 
i860 a total of 31,109,059 bushels went through the same 
gateway. 2 

The most important population movement of this 
period was the filling up of the Great Lakes region. 
Hostile Indian tribes, imperfect transportation, and the 
fact that immigration had come largely from slave ter- 
ritory and could not bring its favorite institution into 
this locality with profit, all had contributed to keep this 
great stretch of territory unsettled. Now all these 
obstacles were removed at once. The Erie Canal and 
steam upon the lakes, followed by the railroad, threw 
wide the gates to the incoming hosts. And the hosts 
were ready to come. The manufacturing states of New 
England and New York and Pennsylvania were casting 
out the first battalions of workless workers displaced by 

1 Census 1900, Bulletin No. 200, on " Agricultural Implements," p. 18 : 
" It was not until the western movement of the population had converted 
the rich alluvial plains of the western states into productive farms, and 
the railroad systems of the country had extended their lines for the dis- 
tribution of farm products, that the progress and development of this 
industry (manufacture of agricultural machinery) found its full expres- 
sion." 

2 Eighth Census. 



250 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



the machine and the superabundance of their own 
product. This army was reenforced by shiploads of 
immigrants. Europe, in the throes of the Revolution of 
1848, was outlawing her rebellious workers and driving 
them by tens of thousands to America. 

Natural calamity added to political upheaval in 
driving the European workers to the New World. 
A potato famine in Ireland in 1848 started the tre- 
mendous flood of Irish toward America, adding one of 
the most important factors of the social life of this 
country. 1 

Within the Northern states there was a great drift of 
population cityward. In 1830 only 6.7 per cent of the 
population of the country lived in cities of more than 
8000 inhabitants. Twenty years later this percentage 
was 1 6. 1. 2 This was the time of the birth of the modern 
city proletariat, one of the most definite products of the 
capitalist system. 

This great Northwest that was now being settled with 
such rapidity was quickly seen to hold the balance of 
power between the hitherto contending sections of the 
country. Whichever side could bind this section to it 
with bonds of economic interest could dominate in the 
national government. The South had the start in the 
race. The commercial artery of the section was the 
southward-flowing Mississippi. The South bought its 
mules and the hay with which they were fed, as well as 

1 Industrial Commission Report, Vol. XV, pp. 260-277. The total 
immigration by decades from 1821 was as follows : 1821 to 1830, 143,439 ; 
1831 to 1840, 599,125; 1841 to 1850, 1,713,251; 1851 to i860, 
2,598,214. Of those who came between 1841 and i860, 1,694,838 came 
from Ireland, and 1,386,293 from Germany. 

2 " Statistical Atlas of the United States," 1900, p. 40. 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 



the corn meal and pork that formed the slave ration, 
from this section. 1 

The East and the West were competing in agriculture. 
There was no little complaint over the fact that the 
cheapness with which grain could be raised in the West 
was depreciating farm values in New York and New 
England. 2 

When manufacture and commerce dominated the East, 
it became a buyer of agricultural products. It then 
competed with the South as a market for the agricultural 
West, instead of competing with the West as a seller in 
the Southern and all other markets. Henceforth the 
fight for the favor of the West was a fight of transporta- 
tion routes. While nature seemed to favor the South in 
the beginning of this struggle, each new invention gave 
more advantage to the East. Moreover, in this direction 
lies Europe, to which much of the products of the prairies 
of the West was destined to flow. 

The cities of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and 
Baltimore fought with each other in the effort to divert 

1 Brown, "The Lower South in American History," p. 35. 

2 Timothy Dwight, in the New England Magazine for April, 1848, 
says : "Soon after the completion of the Erie Canal, lands in New York 
began to increase in price, and rose steadily in value, until they were 
sold in many cases at from $60 to $100 an acre. But as soon as Ohio 
and Michigan began to produce wheat in quantities greatly exceeding 
their own consumption, and were able to deliver in Buffalo several 
million of bushels annually, the value of these lands began to decline. 
A year or two since we were informed that the depreciation was so great 
that lands which some years before had been mortgaged for two-thirds 
or three-fourths of their value would not at that time sell for the amount 
of the mortgage. The same thing is strikingly evinced by the fact that 
the aggregate population of twenty-four counties in the State of New 
York, comprising some of the most fertile in the central and western 
parts of the State, was less in 1845 than in 1840." 



252 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



this trade through their gates. 1 When, in 1853, the fi rst 
railroad united Chicago with the Atlantic coast, DeBow 
estimated that the state of New York alone had ex- 
pended more than a hundred million dollars in improv- 
ing the routes to the Northwest which ran through her 
boundaries. 2 In 1861 an English observer, quoted in the 
New York Times, estimated that $500,000,000 had been 
expended to " change the direction of the commerce of 
the Mississippi." 3 

This "reversing the mouths of the Mississippi" did 
not go on without protest from the South. At the 
numerous Southern conventions held in the years imme- 
diately preceding the war, one of the perennial subjects, 
along with the foreign slave trade, the conquest of new 
slave territory, and the encouragement of Southern manu- 
factures, was the question of how this trade could be 

1 William Grant, " Observations on the Western Trade," in Hudson 
River R.R. Reports, pp. 12-16. 

2 DeBow's Review, September, 1853, P- 3 I 3- 

3 Fite, "Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil 
War," p. 14: "Still another piece of good fortune for the West was the 
trunk line railroads. These were bands of iron binding the farming sections 
to the East, helping to hold them in the Union by providing a market 
for their produce. In the ten years preceding, in the states of Indiana, 
Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa seven thousand miles of railroad were con- 
structed, provision far in advance of the needs of the country, but, as it 
proved, a magnificent preparation for the unforeseen strain of war. The 
Mississippi formerly had been the outlet of these sections to a market, 
carrying the grain and other produce to New Orleans, where it was dis- 
tributed in all directions. After the war closed the River, if the railroads 
had not been in existence, the West would have been isolated without a 
market, and it was believed by some that rather than lose this, the section 
would have followed its market into secession. According to this view, 
the Union was saved by the railroads. Others with less confidence in the 
roads, or perhaps even ignoring their existence, openly feared the western 
secession, and many in the South prophesied it." 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 253 



retained by the South. DeBow never ceased to urge 
the South to enter into competition with the North in 
the building of railroads. In 185 1 he exclaims, "New 
Orleans in every period of her history has been the 
emporium of the West, and New Orleans will only give 
up that distinction after the most unremitting and her- 
culean struggles have exhausted her energy. The sceptre 
has not yet departed, and if her citizens are true to them- 
selves, the sceptre shall not depart." 

The scepter did depart, however. The industrial 
capitalist had too great an advantage in such a struggle. 
The surplus value taken from wageworkers is much 
larger than that obtained from chattel slaves, and it is 
more readily converted into the capital needed for inter- 
nal improvements. Wage labor is much more adapted 
to the construction of such works. It was but natural, 
therefore, that a railroad map of the United States pub- 
lished by DeBow in 1851 shows that not only are the 
roads actually constructed in the North much greater in 
mileage, while our later knowledge tells us that most of 
those dotted lines in the South indicating " projected 
roads" were not constructed until long after chattel 
slavery had disappeared. 

In 1848 came the discovery of gold in California, fol- 
lowed by the wild rush to the Pacific coast, the inflation 
of the money basis, the possibility of a gold standard, 
and a safer system of banking. All these things helped 
to unify and strengthen the growing power of capitalism. 

All things had worked together to weld the North 
into a compact section with common interests. The 
railroad and telegraph had given it industrial and social 
unity. The progress of invention, and the factory sys- 



254 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

tern based upon the inventions, had brought it wealth 
and power. Agriculture, commerce, manufacture, and 
mining were in the wave of prosperity that accompanies 
the conquest of new fields. Everywhere the watch- 
word was expansion. 

Prior to about 1855 the interests of the North had 
been too sectional, competitive, and diversified to form 
the foundation of any common political action. Each 
little competing section had interests uniting it with the 
South. There was no widespread interest demanding 
control of the national government. Here we find the 
explanation of the sham rights between the Whigs and 
the Democrats, with their utter lack of any conflict of 
principles. 1 

There now arose a class throughout the North com- 
pact in its organization, definite and largely agreed in 
industrial interest, and having need of the national gov- 
ernment to defend that interest. This was the little 
competitive bourgeoisie that had already overthrown 
feudalism in Europe. It was in the upper Mississippi 
Valley that this class ruled with fewest entangling al- 
liances with other classes. Here old political ties were 
weak, and the new industrial interests keen. The new 
state governments commanded no such local and state 
patriotism as did the seaboard states, with their pre- 
revolutionary traditions. The little capitalist mind 
possessed employers, wageworkers, and farmers alike. 
All hoped, and with better reason than at any time 
since, to become capitalists. The new and growing 
country about them apparently offered unlimited oppor- 

1 M. Ostrogorski, "Democracy and the Organization of Political 
Parties," Vol. II, pp. 40-41. 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 



255 



tunity to " rise' ' — the highest ideal of the bourgeois 
mind. 

The members of this class wanted internal improve- 
ments built by the national government. They wanted 
a protective tariff. They favored immigration, — the 
manufacturer to cheapen labor, the landowner to raise 
real estate values, all to build up the country and bring 
"prosperity." They wanted a homestead law that 
should assure the remainder of the West to wage labor. 
They opposed any further extension of the slave power, 
and were determined to wrest the control of the national 
government from that power. All these desires found 
expression in the Republican party. 

There was an idealistic element in the organization of 
the Republican party that should not be overlooked. 
There is always such an element in any revolutionary 
movement, and the Republican party was essentially 
revolutionary in many of its purposes. It was demand- 
ing that the control of government be transferred to a 
new social class, and that is the essence of revolution. 
It was the same in the days of the French Revolution, 
— in the time of the repeal of the Corn Laws in Eng- 
land, and in every time of great social and political 
change. Such an idealistic element was already in 
existence in the Eastern states. Its prophet was Horace 
Greeley, and its inspired message was found in the 
columns of the New York Tribune. Around this paper, 
with Greeley at its head, had been gathered Charles A. 
Dana, as managing editor, Albert Brisbane, the Fourierite, 
as the contributor of a column each week on Utopian 
Socialism, and Karl Marx as principal European cor- 
respondent. 



256 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The Tribune had taken up many of the reforms that 
had been demanded by the labor movement of the 
thirties. It had given an idealistic and labor turn to 
many bourgeois principles, which were now adopted by 
the Republican party. It advocated a protective tariff 
as a measure to increase wages instead of profits. In 
so doing it gave to the defenders of the tariff the only 
new argument since Hamilton. Greeley advocated the 
homestead law as a means of granting all an equal share 
in the earth. 1 This action of Greeley and the Tribune 
brought to the new Republican party the support of 
a large section of the working class. The idealism that 
accompanied the birth of the party also gained the 
allegiance of the college and school influence of the 
North. Whittier wrote its campaign songs. Lowell 
translated its doctrines into poetry, while Emerson, 
Bryant, Longfellow, Holmes, and Motley were some of 
the names high in American literature who were counted 
on its membership rolls. 2 

Seeing in the Republican party the incarnation of the 
ideals for which they had fought in Europe, the revolu- 
tionary German exiles of 1848 added their strength to 
the new political movement. This element included 
such men as Carl Schurz, afterward a cabinet officer, 
Weydemeyer, the Socialist and fellow- worker with Marx, 
and whole regiments like those who "fought mit Siegel" 
in the war that was already casting its shadow before. 

1 John R. Commons, " Horace Greeley and the Working Class Origin 
of the Republican Party," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XXIV, 
No. 3. 

2 Wm. H. Smith, "A Political History of Slavery," Vol. I, pp. 
233-234. 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 257 



The first railroad uniting Chicago with the East was 
completed in 1853, and the next year organizations bear- 
ing the name Republican party sprang up almost simul- 
taneously in Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and 
Ohio. 1 

The first national convention of the new party was 
held at Pittsburg in February, 1856. The committee 
calling that convention submitted an address which 
gives the following reasons for forming a new party: 2 — 

" The slaveholding interest cannot be made permanently 
paramount in the general government without involving 
consequences fatal to free institutions. We acknowl- 
edge that it is large and powerful ; that in states where 
s it exists it is entitled under the constitution, like all 
other local interests, to immunity from the interference 
of the general government ; and that it must necessarily 
exercise through its representatives a considerable share 
of political power. But there is nothing in its position, 
as there is certainly nothing in its character, to sustain 
the supremacy which it seeks to establish. 

"The representatives of freedom on the floor of Con- 
gress have been treated with contumely, if they resist 
or question the right to supremacy of the slaveholding 
class. The labor and commerce of sections where slavery 
does not exist obtain tardy and inadequate recognition 
from the general government. . . . Thus is the decision 
of great questions of public policy, touching vast in- 
terests and vital rights, questions even of peace and 
war, made to turn, not upon the requirements of justice 

1 Francis Curtis, "The Republican Party," Chap. IV. 
a Benjamin F. Hall, "The Republican Party," pp. 448-456. 
s 



258 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

and honor, but upon its relation to the subject of slavery 
— upon the effect it will have upon the interest, of the 
slaveholding class." 

It is plain that the indictment here is not of slavery, 
but of the rule of the slaveholding class. 

John C. Fremont, the candidate of the Republican 
party in this first campaign, received more votes than 
the Whig nominee and within a half million of the num- 
ber received by Buchanan, the successful Democrat. 
More than 90 per cent of this vote came from New 
England and the states that touch the Great Lakes. 
Wherever in these states commercial connections were 
close with the South the Republican vote was small. 1 

During the next four years every force that had 
created the Republican party grew stronger. To these 
steadily growing forces was added that sudden shock 
which seems always necessary to bring long developing 
revolutionary forces to a climax. This shock was fur- 
nished by two events — the Dred Scott decision and the 
panic of 1857. The panic had the effect of accentuating 
the need of expansion of capitalist territory and markets, 
of emphasizing the need of controlling the national gov- 
ernment and in general of sharpening class consciousness 
and class antagonisms. 

The panic having created a highly unstable social 
compound, the Dred Scott decision furnished the spark 
that led to the explosion. The Supreme Court had been 

1 James Ford Rhodes, "History of the United States," Vol. Ill, p. 227 : 
"West of the Allegheny mountains the enthusiasm for Fremont was like 
that in New England, New York, and Ohio; but as one traveled east- 
ward a different political atmosphere could easily be felt, and when one 
reached Philadelphia, which was bound to the South by a lucrative 
trade, the chill was depressing." 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 259 



steadily usurping power since the days of Marshall. It 
had grown arrogant and isolated from popular sentiment. 
Years of Democratic control of the national government 
had packed the court with justices friendly to the slave 
power. Now it proceeded to enact into law things that 
the chattel slaveowners had never dared to ask of 
Congress. 

Dred Scott was a negro whose master had taken him 
from Missouri into the free state of Illinois. When he 
was taken back to Missouri, he demanded his freedom 
on the ground that taking him into a free state had 
broken his master's right of property. The court not 
only decided against him, but, anxious to show its com- 
plete subserviency to the slavocracy, it proceeded to 
destroy all the carefully built up compromises by which 
politicians had sought to cover up the struggle between 
the North and the South. Chief Justice Taney, who 
has made his name infamous and the Supreme Court 
forever contemptible by this decision, went on to declare 
that slaves being property and not persons, neither Con- 
gress nor territorial governments could prevent the 
owner of slaves from going where he wished with his 
property. 

This was telling the capitalists of the North that no 
matter what happened, while the slaveholders con- 
trolled the Supreme Court the powers of government 
were out of the reach of the society resting upon wage 
labor. 

When the power of the slaveowner seemed strongest, 
when the Supreme Court had apparently placed him in 
complete command, it was inevitable that those who 
could not see that this was an act of desperation on the 



260 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



part of a falling class, rather than of bold defiance by 
an impregnable ruler, should also grow desperate. Such 
a one was John Brown, who now hurled a new mass of 
explosives into the midst of the conflagration. In as 
recklessly foolish " propaganda of the deed" as was ever 
suggested by the most fanatical defender of " individual 
warfare" he tried, with a handful of men, to capture the 
United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. He 
dreamed that by so doing he would place himself at the 
head of an uprising of negro slaves, who would cut their 
way to liberty over the bodies of their masters. He 
seems to have combined the dream of the abolitionist, 
the bloody visions of bleeding Kansas (where he had 
been a doer of bloody deeds), and the slave-insurrection 
nightmare of the South, and from these phantoms 
sought to build a new society. Of course Brown's little 
force was wiped out, he was hung, and the North almost 
unanimously joined with the South in denouncing his 
action. But before twelve months had passed away, 
troops were marching southward to the tune of "John 
Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave, but his soul 
goes marching on." 

It would be foolish to pass judgment on the deed of 
John Brown. It was inevitable that in the terribly 
electric atmosphere that preceded the coming social 
storm, there should be some individual who should seek 
to "short circuit" the social forces, and get burned up 
for his pains. Such a phenomena did little more than 
demonstrate the existence of these forces. 

When the Republican party held its next convention 
in the summer of i860, the forces that were to carry it 
to victory had already been crystallized along well- 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 261 



defined class lines. That convention was expected to 
nominate William H. Seward for President. He repre- 
sented the idealistic, scholarly, antislavery element of 
New England. But the scepter had passed from the 
Northeast. The Great Lakes region was vigorously asser- 
tive in its right to be heard. This section put forward 
a young politician, whose fame rested largely upon the 
triumphs he had gained in a series of joint debates with 
Stephen A. Douglas. This man's name was Abraham 
Lincoln. 

No man could better typify the class he represented 
than Lincoln. The product of the golden age of capital- 
ism, he embodies all the best of that system. Strong 
common sense, marvelously keen judgment of men, 
shrewd insight into human relations, infinite patience 
and sterling honesty, — these were the ideal virtues of 
capitalism, and in Lincoln they reached their transcendent 
expression. He proved himself the "fittest to survive" 
in that fierce " struggle for existence" under those 
frontier conditions where the struggle was freer and 
fairer than the world has ever known elsewhere. 

The days that produced Lincoln are gone. He will 
stand as the greatest American until some other social 
stage shall have produced its best. In some ways he 
stood above the system that produced him, but this is 
true of any man who incarnates the very best of any 
social system, because he must, perforce, incarnate some- 
thing of the promise of that system. 

To say that the Republican party was organized or 
that the Civil War was waged to abolish slavery, is but 
to repeat a tale invented after the war was almost over 
to glorify that party and the class it represented. No 



262 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

candidate was ever a better representative of his party 
than Lincoln. He repeatedly and emphatically denied 
any intention of interfering with slavery in the South. 
In his debate with Douglas he said : " We have no right 
at all to disturb it in the states where it exists, and we 
profess that we have no more inclination to disturb it 
than we have the right to do it." In his first inaugural 
he declared his purpose to be to "save the Union " and 
this either with or without slavery. 

So eager was the North and the Republican party to 
maintain the Union, and so indifferent were they to the 
slavery question, that after the election of Lincoln, both 
houses of Congress passed a provision for a constitutional 
amendment and sent it to the states for ratification, 
providing that slavery should be forever guaranteed 
and that no future amendment to the Constitution 
should ever be submitted authorizing Congress to 
interfere with slavery in the states where it was then 
located. 1 

The South seceded because no industrial system can 
continue unless its ruling class controls the government. 
This is especially true of a system based on exploitation. 
The South had no need of the North. Its industrial 
system was barred by soil and climate from expanding 
in that direction. If it had a government it could con- 
trol, there was the possibility of expansion to the South. 
Even at the price of surrendering the system of chattel 
slavery the Southern ruling class preferred a govern- 
ment which it could control. Numerous proposals look- 
ing to the abolition of negro chattel slavery were con- 
sidered in the Confederate Congress, when it was thought 
1 J. Schouler, "History of the United States," Vol. V, p. 507. 



RISE OF NORTHERN CAPITALISM 263 



that such action might possibly bring the support of 
France and England to the Confederate cause. 1 

The North, on the contrary, had a strong interest in 
maintaining the Union intact. Capitalism must expand, 
and it knows almost no limits of soil or climate. The 
South was largely in the nature of a colony of the 
North. Estimates of the debts of Southern planters and 
merchants to Northern capitalists in i860 run from forty 
to four hundred million dollars. 2 These debts were 
promptly repudiated on the outbreak of war. The Con- 
federate government authorized the payment of such 
debts to it instead of to the original creditor. 3 

When, therefore, the capitalist class came into power 
through Lincoln and the Republican party, secession by 
the South and Civil War to prevent that secession were 
inevitable. 

1 American Historical Review, Vol. I, p. 97. 

2 John C. Schwab, "The Confederate States of America," p. no. 

3 Ibid., pp. 112-121. London Economist, Jan. 12, 1861, p. 30, says: 
"Many voices have been heard clamoring for secession as an excuse for 
repudiating the debts, private and commercial, as well as public, which 
they owe to the wealthier classes of the North." 



CHAPTER XXII 



THE ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 

The ruling class of the South having determined upon 
secession, and the rulers of the North being convinced 
that their interests demanded a united nation, the ques- 
tion of which set of interests should prevail was decided 
by an armed conflict. 

Looking back upon that conflict through the lens of 
later knowledge, the South seems foredoomed to the 
defeat it met. When the Constitution was adopted and 
the nation began, the two sections were almost exactly 
equal in area, population, and wealth. The slight shade 
of advantage belonged to the South. This equality con- 
tinued until the industrial revolution that followed the 
War of 1812. From that date on the North, borne by 
the new machine-driven industry, began to leave the 
agricultural South behind. 1 

1 Ellwood Fisher, " The North and the South," in BeBow's Review, 
Vol. VII, p. 135: "When the constitution of the United States was 
adopted, the population of the two sections of the United States was 
nearly equal — each being not quite two million of inhabitants, the 
South including more than half a million slaves. The territory then 
occupied by the two was, perhaps, also nearly equal in extent and fer- 
tility. Their commerce also was about the same; the North exporting 
about $9,800,540 in 1790 and the South $9,200,500. Even the property 
held by the two sections was almost exactly the same in amount, being 
four hundred millions in value in each, according to an assessment for 
direct taxes in 1799. For the first quarter of a century of the present 
government, up to 181 6, the South took the lead of the North in com- 

264 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 265 



By i860 the South had a population of but nine 
million. Of these three million were negro slaves. The 
North had a population of twenty- two million, the in- 
dustrial portion of whom were wageworkers, much more 
effective fighters in a military contest, — and this 
whether they carried guns or tools of production. In 
accumulated capital, in industrial productivity, in trans- 
portation facilities, in financial resources, commercial 
power, and all the other things from which modern 
militarism draws its strength the North was overwhelm- 
ingly the superior. 1 

merce ; as at the end of that period the exports of the Southern states 
amounted to about $30,000,000, which was five millions more than the 
Northern. At this time, in 1816, South Carolina and New York were 
the two greatest exporting states of the union, South Carolina exporting 
more than $10,000,000 and New York over $14,000,000. 

" Even in manufactures, the South at this period excelled the North 
in proportion to the numbers of their populations. In 1810, according 
to the returns of the marshals of the United States, the fabrics of wool, 
cotton, and linen manufactured in the Southern states, amounted to 
40,344,274 yards, valued at $21,061,525, whilst the North fabricated 
34,786,497 yards, estimated at $15,771,724. . . . 

"Since that period a great change has occurred. The harbors of Nor- 
folk, of Richmond, of Charleston, and Savannah have been deserted for 
those of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; and New Orleans is the 
only southern city that pretends to rival its northern competitors. The 
grass is growing in the streets of those cities of the South, which origi- 
nally monopolized our colonial commerce, and maintained their ascend- 
ancy in the earlier years of the union. Manufactures and the arts have 
also gone to take up their abode in the North. Cities have expanded 
and multiplied in the same favored region. Railroads and canals have 
been constructed and education has delighted there to build her colleges 
and seminaries." 

1 John C. Ropes, "The Story of the Civil War," Vol. I, p. 99 : "In 
material prosperity the North was far in advance of the South. In 
accumulated capital there was no comparison between the two sections. 
The immigration from Europe had kept the labor market of the North 



266 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



In spite of these apparently self-evident facts, the 
organs of ruling class interests in the South kept up a 
strange sort of bombastic self-deception. This exag- 
gerated self-confidence, and indifference to impending 
overthrow, together with a blindness to the strength of 
rising classes, has been an almost universal characteristic 
of ruling classes. An editorial in DeBow's Review, in 
1862, when defeat for the South was already written 
plain upon her industrial and social life, is a striking 
illustration of this blind overconfidence : — ■ 

"The North is bankrupt. Her people must migrate 
to the West or starve. The census of i860 will prove 
beyond the possibility of doubt that the states of New 
York and Pennsylvania and the New England states do 

well stocked, while no immigrants from Ireland or Germany were willing 
to enter into a competition with negro slaves. The North was full of 
manufactures of all kinds; the South had very few of any kind. The 
railroad systems of the North were far more perfect and extensive, and 
the roads were much better supplied with rolling stock and all necessary 
apparatus. The North was infinitely richer than the South in the pro- 
duction of grain and meat, and the boasted value of the South 's great 
staple — cotton — sank out of sight when the blockade closed the south- 
ern ports to all commerce. 

" Accompanying these greater material resources, there existed in the 
North a much larger measure of business capacity than was to be found 
in the South. . . . The great merchants and managers of large rail- 
roads and other similar enterprizes, in the North were able to render 
valuable assistance to the men who administered the State and National 
governments. . . ." Page 101 : " The Mercantile marine of the United 
States, which in 186 1 was second only to that of Great Britain, was almost 
wholly owned in the North. It was chiefly in the New England states 
that the ships were built. The sailors, so far as they were Americans 
at all, and the greater part of them were Americans, were Northerners. 
The owners were nearly all merchants in the North Atlantic cities. 
Hence the government had no difficulty in recruiting the navy to any 
extent, both in officers and men, from a class thoroughly familiar with 
the sea." 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 267 

not produce annually enough meat and bread to feed 
their population for six months in the year, and (except 
for a little wool) produce nothing with which to clothe 
them. Their soil is extremely sterile, and it would 
require many years manuring to make it capable of sup- 
porting the present population. They cannot produce 
their own food and clothing and will have nothing 
wherewith to purchase it. The cotton and tobacco crop 
of the South for a single year would sell for four times 
as much as all the specie currency in the States we have 
mentioned. They will require every cent of this specie 
for home use, at least during the war. Their manufac- 
tures will sell only in the Northwest, and there they can 
sell but a few of the cheapest and coarsest kind — not 
one quarter enough to supply the deficiency of food and 
clothing. Their coarse cottons were the only articles 
which they could sell in the markets of the world before 
secession. Now the raw cotton will cost them so much 
that they will no longer be able to sell cotton fabrics 
abroad. Their local wealth, derived from houses, fac- 
tories, railroads, etc., ceased to exist the instant seces- 
sion became an accomplished fact. Their mercantile 
marine is the only thing they can sell in foreign markets, 
and as they will have no further use for it at home, they 
should sell it as speedily as possible. The South will 
need it all, and would buy it, to carry on that very trade 
which secession has transferred to her from the North." 

Some idea of the value of knowledge transmitted 
through class interests is gained when it is remembered 
that the writer of this was the Commissioner of the 
census in i860 and was generally looked upon as one of 
the ablest students of economic and political conditions. 



268 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



The Southern rulers did not believe that a united 
North would resist separation. Much dependence was 
placed upon the strong ties of commercial interest that 
bound whole sections of the North to the South. This 
dependence was by no means wholly misplaced. 
Throughout the war there were many sections of the 
North where the tide of Southern sympathy ran high. 
In every case it will be found that these sections were 
bound to the South and to the system of chattel slavery 
by economic ties. 1 

When broad class interests are sharply threatened, 
such exceptions become of small importance. In time 
of great class conflicts, the representatives of dominant 
class interests are ruthless in their suppression of diver- 
gent individual or group interests, whether these be of 
"Tories," " copperheads," or " scabs." If public opinion 
does not suffice to suppress all expression of revolt 
against the general class interest, then this opinion is at 
once reenforced by all the measures of group defense. 
This is the reason why the firing upon Fort Sumter 
caused such an instantaneous crystallization of " union" 
sentiment in the North and of " Southern patriotism" 
in the slave states. 

As soon as the two systems of industry were definitely 
pitted against each other, the tremendous superiority of 
the wage-labor system appeared. 

Chattel slavery in America was an historical atavism, 
and not a stage in social evolution. It came many 
generations after the disappearance of the era of which 
chattel slavery was an essential foundation. It came 
because of the great profits which the raising of one 

1 Brown, "The Lower South in American History," pp. 59-60. 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 269 

crop in the midst ;of an otherwise capitalist society 
produced. This social reversion made the South indus- 
trially dependent upon the capitalist societies that were 
its workshops. When the access to these workshops 
was stopped, the South became almost helpless. It was 
not quite helpless. The first effect of isolation and war 
was, as always, to hasten industrial evolution, and 
especially to force artificially the growth of machine 
production. 1 

No opportunity was offered for even this accelerated 
evolution to produce any important results. Time was 
not given to construct mills and machines and to develop 
the skilled artisans and to organize the industrial and 
distributing machinery essential to capitalized industry. 
From the first the Northern campaigns were directed 
toward the disorganization and disintegration of all 
germs of industrial life. 

The Mississippi was the great artery of internal 
Southern trade. When armies to the north and the 
blockade on the sea had stopped foreign trade, the 
possession of that river by the Federal forces prevented 

1 Walter E. Fleming, "Industrial Development in Alabama during 
the Civil War," in South Atlantic Quarterly, July, 1904, p. 267: "Both 
the state and the Confederate government encouraged manufactures 
by legislation. . . . Factories were soon in operation all over the state, 
especially in central Alabama. In all places where there were govern- 
ment factories there were also factories conducted by private individ- 
uals. In 1 86 1 there were factories at Tallahassee, Autauganville, and 
Pottsville, with 23,000 spindles and 800 employees, which could make 
5000 yards of good cloth a day. And other cotton mills were established 
as early as 1861. The federals burned these buildings and destroyed 
the machinery. There was the most unsparing hostility displayed by 
the Northern armies to this branch of industry. They destroyed in- 
stantly every cotton factory within their reach." 



270 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



even the local circulation of commodities which would 
have maintained at least a semblance of industrial life. 

The army of the West under Grant captured Vicks- 
burg in July, 1863, and the Mississippi became a Union 
stream. This also separated the eastern and larger sec- 
tion of the Confederacy from its granary and provision 
supply — Texas. 1 With the essential foreign trade cut 
off and the principal channels of internal trade disrupted, 
the industrial destruction of the South was completed 
by Sherman's " march to the sea," which destroyed the 
beginnings of the factory system and the already imper- 
fect railroad system. 

Military strength rests upon an industrial base. The 
Civil War was decided far from the noise of exploding 
powder and blaring bands and flowing flags. In the 
South the industrial base was a miserable makeshift at 
the best, a crumbling hulk at the finish. 

Modern industrial society is built upon an iron frame- 
work. Nothing is more characteristic of the weakness 
of Southern industrial life than the futile, frantic efforts 
made to secure iron. 

"In a paper read before a railroad conference in 
Richmond," says Rhodes, "it is suggested that the gov- 
ernment make a public appeal for all the cast and 
wrought iron scrap on the farms, in the yards and 
houses of the Confederacy, and that it establish a sys- 
tem for the collection from the country, cities, towns, 
and villages of 1 broken and worn-out plows, plow points, 
hoes, spades, axes, broken stoves, household and kitchen 
utensils,' with promise of adequate compensation. The 
rails of the street railroad in Richmond were taken up 
1 Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. IV, pp. 119, 122. 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 271 



to be made into armor for a gunboat. The planters of 
Alabama, in the very regions where iron ore existed in 
abundance underground, could not get iron enough to 
make and repair their agricultural implements." 

By the time of the Civil War the railroad had already 
become the most important tool of an industrially in- 
terdependent society. In railroads the South was at a 
miserable disadvantage in the beginning, and every day 
aggravated that disadvantage. Mileage, already too 
little, grew less before the ravages of Northern armies 
and the paucity of Southern resources. The war dis- 
solved the loose beginnings of systems into their feeble 
isolated elements. 1 A defective and scanty equipment 
quickly deteriorated from its original low standard into 
almost complete uselessness. 2 The workshops for the 
manufacture and repair of equipment were in the North, 
and the South was unable to improve or even maintain 
the scanty rolling stock possessed at the time of secession. 

The postal system of the North looks poor when 

1 Schwab, "The Confederate States of America," pp. 272-273. 

2 Ibid., p. 274. Rhodes, "History of the United States," Vol. V, 
p. 384 : "In 1 86 1 the railroads had already begun to deteriorate, and as 
the years went on the condition got worse and worse. ... An estimate 
in detail of the capacity of 34 railroads was made to the Secretary of 
War (in 1863) which showed on an average of the whole less than two 
freight trains daily each way, each train carrying 122 tons; and this 
estimate was undoubtedly too high to apply to regular operations through- 
out the year. From everywhere came complaints. Cities wanted food 
which the railroads could not bring. In January, 1864, it was said that 
corn was selling at $1 to $2 a bushel in southwestern Georgia and at 
$12 to $15 in Virginia. Another Richmond authority at the close of 
that year was sure that every one would have enough to eat if food could 
be properly distributed. The defective transportation was strikingly 
emphasized when Sherman's army in Georgia revelled in plenty while 
Lee's soldiers almost starved in Virginia." 



272 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

viewed from to-day's vantage point. It was infinitely 
superior to that of the South. The Confederate consti- 
tution required the postal service to be always self- 
supporting. To meet this condition letter postage was 
placed at five cents per half ounce for less than five 
hundred miles and ten cents for greater distances. 
When even these rates failed to pay expenses, they were 
doubled. 

In the financial resources which are drawn from in- 
dustrial development the South was even more strikingly 
inferior. Although this section had the sympathy of the 
European industrial and commercial rivals of the North, 
England in particular, yet this sympathy did not lead 
them to purchase Confederate bonds in large quantities. 
There was no powerful banking class in the South to 
gain profits for its members and furnish resources to the 
government by great financial operations such as are 
essential to the conduct of a great war. 

The one important Southern asset was cotton. Later 
writers, with that wise foresight that comes so clearly 
after the events are long past, have often pointed out 
that had the Confederate government seized all the 
cotton possible during the months after secession, and 
before the blockade was declared, and shipped it to Eng- 
land, that cotton could have been drawn against for 
many millions of much needed dollars. But Southern 
economic philosophy was as atavistic as its social sys- 
tem, and, with a strange revival of a long dead Mer- 
cantilism, the Confederates imagined they could compel 
the weaving nations to come to their relief by withhold- 
ing the raw material for the looms. So the South fell 
into the trap of its opponent, and aided the Northern 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 273 

blockade by forbidding the export of cotton. By the 
time the foolishness of this policy had become apparent 
the tentacles of the Northern navy had tightened until 
the harbors of the South were closed save to the highly 
hazardous and expensive commerce of the blockade 
runners. 

Since there was no class of profit-takers at home or 
abroad, both able and willing to purchase Confederate 
bonds, the government was soon compelled to fall back 
upon the forced loans of fiat money. Later this was 
supplemented by an economic reversion to the stage of 
barter and commodity currency. Bonds were exchanged 
for and taxes collected in commodities (especially cotton, 
of course), and the government accumulated great 
quantities of commodities whose market was barred by 
Federal gunboats. 1 

When defeat was seen to be inevitable the whole 
Confederacy collapsed. The currency lost all value, and 
nearly as many soldiers deserted and returned to their 
homes as remained to be surrendered to Federal generals. 
There are rumors that these general desertions were due 
to the spreading of the idea that "this is a rich man's 
war and a poor man's fight," and that non-slaveholding 
soldiers left because they had come to realize their non- 
interest in the war. 2 Unfortunately there seems to be 
little contemporary evidence of such intelligence. The 
South was defeated because its social life rested upon a 
lower, more undeveloped, less perfectly organized and 
more essentially atavistic industrial base than that of 
the North. 

1 " Cambridge Modern History," Vol. Ill, p. 610. 

2 James S. Pike's "The Prostrate State," p. 75. 

T 



274 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

There was one fact which, had there been any to read 
its significance in the light of historical evolution through 
class struggles, would have been seen to be darkly por- 
tentous for the negro. This was the fact that there 
were no slave revolts during the war. 1 The goblin that 
had kept the South in trembling terror for a half a cen- 
tury was seen to be the phantom created by a guilty 
conscience. The fact was more sinister in its significance 
for the black. His inaction in time of crisis, his failure 
to play any part in the struggle that broke his shackles, 
told the world that he was not of those who to free them- 
selves would strike a blow. 

Representatives of a ruling class, both North and 
South, have praised him for his " loyalty" and "fidelity" 
in a time of danger. At the same time this same ruling 
class has shown its contempt for him by taking from him 
many of the rights tossed him as incidental to the game 
of war. Among the rights so tossed him was freedom 
from chattel slavery. Emancipation was not granted to 
help the negro, but to hurt the South. That it came 
too late to have much effect even in that direction may 
be judged from the fact that the Confederate Congress 
long debated the question of freeing, and even arming, 
the slaves as a means of gaining European sympathy. 

Not only were Northern resources vastly superior at 
the beginning of the war ; but war under wage labor, 
unless pushed to a degree of exhaustion not attained even 
by the stupendous struggle of the Civil War, so far from 
impoverishing or weakening, actually enriches and 
strengthens the dominant class. 

The panic that began in 1857 reached its most acute 
1 Rhodes, "History of the United States," Vol. V, pp. 460-464. 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 275 

and depressing stage at the outbreak of the war. It is 
this fact that is largely responsible for the "hard times " 
that are associated with the first years of the war. At 
the very time when the military outlook was darkest for 
the North, industrial recovery began. 1 The momentum 
of the upward movement was much accelerated by the 
military operations. The vast armies in the field, aver- 
aging a million and a half men from the North alone, 2 
and making no account of the large numbers indirectly 
connected with military operations and withdrawn from 
productive industry, created a tremendous market 
" foreign" to the direct industrial process. This un- 
productive mass absorbed such a quantity of the products 
of labor, that a surfeited market was almost impossible. 
Consequently the surplus value produced by the workers 
who remained in the fields and the factories, using the 
newly invented machinery with multiplied productive 
power, flowed in gigantic streams into the pockets of the 
Northern capitalists. 3 

The Civil War brought the era of great manufacturing 
plants. It made iron and wool the rulers of the industrial 
world, and therefore the political rulers, and the makers of 
tariffs and masters of appropriation bills for two genera- 
tions. The demand for uniforms and blankets for the 
armies guaranteed an almost exhaustless market for cloth 
of an unchanging character. Mill after mill ran month 
after month exclusively upon goods for the armies in 
the field. Cotton mills were remodeled to enable them 
to weave wool. Hundreds of new establishments were 
built. All paid great dividends upon the capital in- 

1 Rhodes, loc. cit., Vol. V, pp. 198-199. 2 Ibid., p. 186. 

3 David A. Wells, 11 Our Burden and our Strength." 



276 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



vested. The following table shows the sudden increased 
consumption of wool by American mills during the Civil 
War: 1 — 



Year Pounds Used 

1840 45,615,326 

1850 71,176,355 

i860 85,334,876 

1863 180,057,156 

1864 213,871,157 



The production of profits and the creation of new in- 
dustries in connection with wool was not confined to the 
process of weaving. The necessity for making such great 
quantities of identical suits brought into existence the 
ready-made clothing industry. The mechanical founda- 
tion for this industry had been laid by the invention of the 
sewing machine, which had been in process since 1840, 
and been perfected to a practicable working machine by 
Elias Howe in 1849. 2 

The great profits in the production of genuine woolen 
goods could not fail to create a fraudulent imitative in- 
dustry. The war, with its scarcity of cotton and high 
price for wool, created the great American "shoddy" 
industry. 3 

Iron and steel completed their conquest of the indus- 
trial field during, and largely because of, the Civil War. 

1 Statistical Abstract 1900; Bolles, "Industrial History," pp. 382- 
383 ; Census of 1890, " Manufactures," p. 8 ; Levasseur, " The American 
Workman," p. 26. 

2 Sewing machines using the "chain stitch" had been in use for many 
years and had been gradually improved. Howe's contribution was the 
"lock stitch" with two threads. See article "Sewing Machines" 
in " Encyclopedia Americana " ; also Fite, "Social and Industrial Condi- 
tion in the North during the Civil War," pp. 88-89. 

3 Census of 1890, " Manufacturing Industries," Vol. Ill, p. 38. 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 277 



The demand for small arms and artillery, wagons, rail- 
road supplies, and ironclads made this the Golden Age 
of profits in iron. Not only did existing mills find their 
capacities taxed at exorbitant prices; new ones were 
erected almost by the hundreds, and the earth was 
searched for ore supplies. In this search the great ore 
beds of Lake Superior, the possession of which insured 
the establishment of a world-wide steel trust in the future, 
were discovered and opened up on a large scale. 1 

The wage system gains much of its power from its 
ability to substitute machines for men. The armies 
taken from industry left an increased demand for labor 
power. This demand was met by increasing the pro- 
ductive power of those left behind through improved 
machinery. The records of the patent office show that 
a quick response was made to the premium that was 
thus placed upon invention. In 1861 there were 3340 
patents granted. Four years later, when the patents 
from the inventions made during the war were reaching 
the patent office in large numbers, and while the South- 
ern states were outside the Union and more than a million 
of the men at the North were in military service, the 
remnant left behind took out 6220 patents. 2 

1 " One Hundred Years of American Commerce," p. 325 ; Bolles, "In- 
dustrial History," pp. 208-209; J. H. Kennedy, "The Opening up of 
the Lake Superior Iron Region," Magazine of American History, Vol. II, 
P- 357- 

2 David A.Wells, "Recent Experiences of the United States" ; Report 
Commissioner of Patents, 1863, p. 47 : "Although the country has been 
engaged in a war which would have seemed to tax to the utmost all its 
energies, the applications for patents for the last year have been equalled 
in only two former years; and yet one half of our territory, shrouded 
in the cloud of rebellion, has contributed nothing to invention or human 
improvement," 



278 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



It was this power of the North to produce, this 
peculiarity of the wage system that draws strength from 
the murderous waste of war, that gave that section its 
power. The war, was won as much by the industrial 
workers who toiled in the shop (and whose death rate 
and percentage of injured was fully as high as that of the 
workers in the military ranks) as by those who carried 
guns. Yet pensions and glory are reserved exclusively 
for those who took up the trade of killing. 

Perhaps the strongest battalions in this industrial 
army that fought for the North were on the farms. It 
has been said that "the war was won by the McCormick 
reaper," and the statement is more nearly true than most 
popular generalizations on history. It was not alone that 
the new horse-drawn machinery multiplied the power of 
the workers in the fields. It transformed the aged, the 
women, and the children, whom the marching armies 
had left behind, into producers more effective than strong 
men had been with the former tools. So it was that the 
wartime crops, raised by the weakest fraction of the in- 
dustrial population, were greater than any raised by 
adult skilled farmers in former years. 1 

1 Commissioner of Patents, Report for 1863, p. 21 : "The most strik- 
ing fact connected with this class (agricultural implements) is the rapid 
increase of applications filed. Notwithstanding half a million of our 
agriculturists have been withdrawn from the farm to engage in military 
service, still the number of applications for patents on agricultural 
implements (exclusive of reapers, beehives, horse hay-forks, and horse 
hay-rakes) has increased from 350 in 1851 to 502 in 1863. At first 
thought such a result would seem an anomaly, but it is this large drain 
upon the laboring classes which has caused a greater demand than usual 
for labor-saving machinery. The increased demand for farm products, 
and their higher price in consequence, have also doubtless helped to 
increase the number of labor-saving machines." 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 279 



These bountiful crops found a ready market at high 
prices. To the increased demand from the unproductive 
armies in the field was added an extra call from Europe 
due to poor harvests. The farmer, like the industrial 
capitalist, drew prosperity from the war. His influence 
in government was still considerable, as is seen by the 
establishment in 1862 of a national department of agri- 
culture and the subsidizing the state agricultural colleges. 

The influence of the war, through its effect upon manu- 
facturing, transportation, and agriculture, had far-reach- 
ing effects upon the movements of population and the 
relative strength of sections and cities. 

That the states around the Great Lakes were not mis- 
taken in deciding that their material interests united 
them with the system of wage labor is evidenced by the 
fact that to no other section did the Civil War bring such 
great material growth. When the Mississippi was com- 
pletely closed to traffic and the South was cut off as a 
market, the lake ports became the only gateways for 
the tremendous commerce of the broad agricultural 
Hinterland. 1 Chicago and Cleveland leaped at once 

1 Fite, "Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the 
Civil War," p. 67. Speaking of Chicago : " This city had the unique 
distinction among the growing western cities of possessing no railroad 
indebtedness, while her rivals, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit, and some 
smaller cities, weighed down by debts to obtain the few railroads they 
had, were even compelled to call upon their respective states to issue 
many millions of dollars of bonds in their aid. The railroads created 
Chicago, not Chicago the railroads. It was a natural trade center to 
which in the short space of ten years seven new trunk lines from the South, 
West and North were built, and from which three trunk lines and the 
Lakes led eastward. As late as 1850 the city celebrated the arrival of 
the first train. In 1864 it was entered by over ninety trains daily." 
James F. Rhodes, in American Magazine of History, II, p. 337: "The 
turning point of the material development of Cleveland was reached in 



280 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



from trade centers to great crude industrial centers. 
The flow of agricultural products called into existence 
the outline of that great radial system of railroads that 
now feed those cities, and has been responsible for their 
growth. 

The manipulation of war finances poured such a golden 
flood into the vaults of a clique of New York bankers as 
to give them domination within the capitalist ranks. 1 
Inflation of the currency with the accompanying oppor- 
tunity to gamble in gold, the manipulation of internal 
revenue taxes, vied with corrupt military contracts and 
contraband trade in cotton in contributing to that " primi- 
tive accumulation," upon which American fortunes are 
based. 2 

So tremendous was the graft in connection with con- 
tracts for military supplies that most historians draw 

i860. ... In i860 the coal and iron industries had only begun to be 
developed, and the war stimulated these manufactures at Cleveland as 
elsewhere. . . . The war found Cleveland a commercial city and left it 
a manufacturing city." 

1 A. S. Bolles, "Financial History of the United States," Vol. Ill, 
p. 20, tells of a meeting of New York bankers with the assistant Secretary 
of the Treasury, where the arrangements were made for the handling 
of the war bonds, by which these bankers controlled the sale of the 
securities. 

2 "United States Cobden Club Essays," Series 1871-1872, pp. 479- 
480 : "Prices rose rapidly with every increase in taxation, or additional 
issues of paper money; and, under such circumstances, the burdens 
of the war were not regarded by the majority of producers as oppressive. 
But, on the contrary, counting the taxes as elements of cost, and reckon- 
ing profit as a percentage on the whole, it was very generally the case 
that the aggregate profits of the producers were actually enhanced by 
reason of the taxes to an extent considerably greater than they would 
have been had no taxes whatever been collected. Indeed, it was not 
infrequently the case that the manufacturers themselves were the most 
strenuous advocates for the continued and rapid increase of taxation." 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 281 

back in horror when they have lifted but a corner of the 
thick blanket of concealment that those who profited 
by the plunder have drawn over the mess. One Congres- 
sional committee, headed by Robert Dale Owen, son of 
Robert Owen the Utopian Socialist, uncovered frauds 
of $17,000,000 in $50,000,000 worth of contracts. 

This committee also unearthed the fact that one of the 
fortunes whose foundation was being built upon fraud and 
corruption at this time was that of J. Pierpont Morgan, 
who was caught in the act of selling and reselling con- 
demned carbines to the government. 1 

Rivaling even the military contracts as a source of 
" primitive accumulation" by corruption, treason, and 
theft, was the contraband trade in cotton carried on by 
Northern merchants in illegal collusion with Federal 
army officers. To prevent the exportation of cotton was 
one of the main objects of the Federal campaign. To 
assist in the marketing of that cotton was treason, " giv- 
ing aid and comfort to the enemy." But cotton was less 
than ten cents a pound in the South and more than fifty 
cents a pound in New England. Before such a profit 
capitalist patriotism has never yet stood unscathed. 
Soon " permits" began to be issued for cotton to pass 
through the Northern lines. Then the floodgates of 
corruption broke and the carnival of profit was on. 
Congressman Ten Eyck of New Jersey stated upon the 
floor of the House of Representatives : — 

"We have . . . prolonged the rebellion, and strength- 
ened the arm of traitors by allowing the very trade, in 
consequence of which not only union men and women, 

1 Rhodes, "History of United States," Vol. V, pp. 213-221. On Mor- 
gan steal, see House Rept, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., No. 2. 



282 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



but rebels of the deepest dye, have been fed and have had 
their pockets lined with greenbacks, by means of which 
they could carry on the rebellion. Under the permission 
to trade, supplies have not only gone in, but bullets and 
powder, instruments of death which our heroic soldiers 
have been compelled to meet upon almost every field of 
battle in which they have been engaged in the South. . . . 
I am greatly afraid that in some quarters the movements 
of our armies have been conducted more with a view to 
carry on trade . . . than to strike down the rebels. . . . 
The whole valley of the Mississippi along the line of the 
permitted trade has been debauched ; not merely the 
Treasury agents, . . . but men engaged in carrying 
our flag, not only upon the land but out upon the 
sea." 

The financing of the war not only created a whole set 
of banking institutions 1 and placed them in the control 
of a small clique, 2 but an enormous national debt was 
contracted that was to maintain a class of bondholders 
for a generation and more to come. A. S. Bolles, in his 
" Financial History of the United States," estimates the 
total expenditures of the war at $6,189,929,908. At the 
close of the war the national debt was $2,773,236,174. 
The workers who had been fighting in the field were now 
compelled to join an army of industrial toilers engaged in 
producing the interest with which the class of bond- 
holders were supported. 

Workingmen made up the military armies and the 
industrial armies alike, but they obtained few benefits 

1 The present system of banking was established Feb. 25, 1863. See 
"Cambridge Modern History," Vol. VII, p. 571. 
2 Bolles, "Financial History of the United States." 



ARMED CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS 283 



from the war. Some of the few organized workers of the 
time saw this and protested against the war. 1 

The "antidraft riots" that took place in many 
cities, and especially in New York, partook of many of 
the characteristics of a labor movement. 2 They began 
with a general strike, or an attempt at such a strike. 
The spokesmen of the movement were insistent in their 
denunciation of the " exemption clauses" that enabled 
rich men to escape the draft. There were many who 
demanded that " money as well as men should be 
drafted." 3 

On the other hand, the more far-seeing and consciously 
revolutionary element among Northern workers realized 
that chattel slavery stood in the way of progress. The 
German immigrants, especially, who were rilled with the 
" spirit of '48," enlisted in the Union army almost en 
masse. The presence of large numbers of these men at 
St. Louis is commonly recognized as being responsible 
for the defeat of secession in Missouri. 

In Europe the Socialists, and nearly the whole wage- 
working class, were with the North. It was the cotton 
spinners of Lancashire who, believing that the war would 

1 Jas. C. Sylvis, "Biography of Wm. H. Sylvis," p. 42 : "Among the 
workingmen, a few choice spirits, North and South, knowing that all 
the burdens and none of the honors of war are entailed upon labor, 
were engaged in an effort to frustrate the plans of those who seemed to 
desire, and whose fanaticism was calculated to precipitate hostilities." 

2 See "The Volcano under the City," by "A Volunteer Special." 

3 In the scrapbooks collected by William Sylvis, now in the Crerar 
Library, Chicago, there is a clipping (Vol. 12) of an article by C. Ben 
Johns, Corresponding Secretary Pennsylvania State Labor Union, dis- 
cussing a plank in the platform of the National Labor Union, from which 
the following is taken : " There is a resolution ... in which we demand 
that in time of war, money shall be drafted as well as men." 



284 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

end chattel slavery, starved rather than see work come 
through lifting the cotton blockade. When the capital- 
ists of England, more eager to defend their immediate 
profits than even the broad interests of their class, would 
have interfered in behalf of the Confederacy, it was these 
workers who stood in the way of such action, and not the 
least of those who were responsible for this steadfast 
position of the English workers was the founder of modern 
scientific Socialism — Karl Marx. 1 He worked tire- 
lessly to this end, and as a result of his efforts the In- 
ternational Workingmen's Association (the "Old Inter- 
national") sent a resolution of sympathy to President 
Lincoln. When we remember the strength of this or- 
ganization at this time, its widespread influence in Eu- 
rope, and the critical moment at which that influence was 
exerted, it seems probable that it had as much to do with 
the outcome of the Civil War as many factors to which 
historians have given much greater weight. 

Out of the Civil War was born the elements of present 
society. It created the great capitalist and the great 
industry and the mechanical foundation upon which 
these rest. It placed these in control of the national 
government, and for the next generation capitalism was 
to find its greatest development in the nation the war had 
maintained as a unit. 



1 John Spargo, "Life of Karl Marx," pp. 268-270. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



RECONSTRUCTION 

During armed conflict the commercial and industrial 
capitalist skulks in the background, fattening upon the 
offal of war. When even the low virtues that war de- 
mands were no longer necessary to social rulership, these 
vultures came from their retreat and ruled and rioted in 
plunder. Part of that ruling and rioting made up what 
is called the Reconstruction Period. 

The conquest of the South was complete and crushing. 
The old ruling class, and the social system upon which it 
lived, were gone, and none could be foolish enough to ex- 
pect its restoration. The attitude of the ruling spirits 
of the South may be judged by the announcement in the 
first number of a new series of DeBow's Review, ap- 
pearing in January, 1866, and which reads as follows : — 

"My purpose in the future is to give it [the Review] a 
national character, and to devote all of my energies and 
resources to the development of the great material in- 
terests of the Union. . . . 

" Regarding the issues of the past as dead, about which 
a practical philosophy will not dispute, and those of the 
present as living and potential, it is the part of the Re- 
view to accept in good faith the situation and deduce 
from it all that can be promotive of the best interests of 
the whole country." 

285 



286 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Northern generals who were stationed in the South 
at the close of the war were almost unanimous in report- 
ing that the former Confederate soldiers and officers were 
willing to accept the results of the defeat they had suf- 
fered. 

The passage of sectional hatred would, however, have 
thwarted the plans of a small but powerful division of the 
Northern capitalists. The group of great capitalists 
created by the war was still composed of too few persons, 
and was too highly competitive, to be able to control the 
national government under normal conditions. 

This group of great corporations, whose influence was 
so feared by Lincoln, was helpless to combat the small 
bourgeoisie which was still dominant in much more than 
a majority of the states. The abolition of slavery raised 
the same small bourgeoisie into power in the South. Had 
the South been permitted to return to the Union in the 
simple natural manner desired by Lincoln, 1 there would 
have been a vast fairly uniform body of voters through- 
out the South and the upper Mississippi Valley who 
would have been hostile to the interests of the great capi- 

1 " Complete Works," Vol. II, p. 674. Last public address : "We all 
agree that the seceded states, so-called, are out of their proper, practical 
relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government, 
civil and military in regard to those states is to again get them into that 
proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in 
fact easier, to do this without deciding, or even considering, whether 
these states have ever been out of the Union. Finding themselves safely 
at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been 
abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper, 
practical relations between these States and the Union, and each forever 
after innocently indulge his own opinion whether in doing the acts he 
brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave them proper 
assistance, they never having been out of it." 



RECONSTRUCTION 



287 



talists. The Greenback movement, the Union Labor 
party of the early 70's, and the widespread antagonism 
to the clique of bondholders, great steel and woolen 
manufacturers, and government contractors, show how 
real was this danger to great capitalist interests. 

If, on the other hand, a way could be found to keep 
alive and aggravate sectional hatred, and to keep the 
Southern states from the Union until a powerful plutoc- 
racy could seize upon all the strategic points of social 
control, then the interests of rapidly concentrating wealth 
would be conserved. It is not necessary to conceive 
that all this was clearly foreseen and made the basis of 
conscious social action, by those responsible for the pro- 
gram of Reconstruction. There were plenty of immedi- 
ate material advantages for individual members of the 
class whose more distant interests were to be conserved 
which led to the same end. 

There were still prodigious possibilities of plunder in 
the stricken South. There were hordes of picayune polit- 
ical camp followers hungry for pelf. The fanatical 
abolitionist, to whom the chattel slaveholder had been 
a demon, and the purchaser of wage slaves a public 
benefactor, was a willing tool in the orgy of Reconstruc- 
tion. To these could be called the support of all that 
flock of vultures that was to glut itself upon the desola- 
tion of the Southland. 

At first glance there would seem to have been little 
left in the South worthy the attention of vandals. Sel- 
dom has the desolation of war been more terrible, for 
seldom has war swept over as complex a society, where 
its destruction could be so terrible. For compared with 
the societies of other centuries that of the South was 



288 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

complex, however simple it appears when contrasted with 
that of to-day or with the contemporaneous North. 

Almost all of the industrial life that belonged to 
recent times was wiped out by the war. It would be 
hard to paint an exaggerated picture of the conditions 
that prevailed. One such picture has been given by 
James W. Garner, in his "Reconstruction in Mississippi." 
This will hold good for the entire South save that in many 
states where the operations of the armies had been more 
general, the devastation and social disintegration was 
much greater. He says of Mississippi : — 

"The people were generally impoverished ; the farms 
had gone to waste, the fences having been destroyed by 
the armies, or having decayed from neglect; the fields 
were covered with weeds and bushes ; farm implements 
and tools were gone, so that there were barely enough 
farm animals to meet the demands of agriculture ; busi- 
ness was at a standstill ; banks and commercial agencies 
had either suspended or closed on account of insolvency ; 
the currency was in a wretched condition; . . . there 
was no railway or postal system worth speaking of ; only 
here and there a newspaper running; the labor system 
in vogue since the establishment of the colonies was 
completely overturned ; . . . worse than all this was the 
fact that about one-third of the white bread-winners of 
the state had either been sacrificed in the contest or were 
disabled for life, so that they could not longer be con- 
sidered as factors in the work of economic organization. 
. . . The number of dependent orphans alone was esti- 
mated at 1 0,000." 

Into this industrial and social chaos came a horde of 
mercenary Goths and Vandals. They were released upon 



RECONSTRUCTION 



289 



this desolated land as a part of the political coup d'etat, 
by which the present ruling class attained to power. 

Had President Lincoln lived, it seems probable that 
his powerful personal following, his political shrewdness, 
and keen tactful insight into human motives might have 
enabled him to rally the interests from which he sprung, — ■ 
the pioneer, farmer, and small manufacturing and trading 
class, — and joining these with the new-born factory 
wage working class, carried through his policies. But he 
was dead, and there is no small amount of evidence tend- 
ing to show that the shot that killed him came from the 
direction of Wall Street rather than Richmond. 

It would be hard to find.a man more unsuited to take 
up Lincoln's task than Andrew Johnson. Tactless, 
stubborn, abusive, quarrelsome (aggravated by occa- 
sional intoxication), lacking in political skill, suspected 
of Southern sympathies and of general mediocre ability, 
he was the very opponent which best suited the purposes 
of the followers of Thad Stevens, the Pennsylvania iron- 
master. 

By a skillful use of sectional animosities and political 
alliances the great capitalist element had gained control 
of Congress. The war it had waged secretly against 
Lincoln, was made openly and boastingly upon John- 
son, who was trying to continue Lincoln's policies. That 
he was so following Lincoln, though in a blundering, tact- 
less manner, no historian of to-day would deny. 

As fast as the rebellion had been crushed, Lincoln had 
set about reorganizing the state governments in a simple, 
practical manner. This was a natural action since the 
whole war had been waged upon the theory that a state 
cannot secede, and that therefore the Southern states 
u 



290 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



had never been outside the Union. The national govern- 
ment had been conducting the war under the clause of 
the constitution giving power to " suppress domestic 
insurrection" in any state. 

While the states were de facto out of the Union, there- 
fore, Congress, courts, and army had declared them 
firmly inside. 1 When the "domestic insurrection" was 
suppressed, and the state governments were recognizing 
the authority of the national government, it became to the 
interest of the class that controlled Congress to proceed 
upon the theory that these states were now outside the 
Union. 

This theory was translated into action by another 
coup d'etat. When the regularly elected representatives 
of the former Confederate states presented their creden- 
tials at Washington, the clerk of the House of Represen- 
tatives under the instructions of the so-called "Radical," 
or Stevens wing of the Republican party, refused to read 
their names when calling the roll of the new House. 

A law was then forced through by this same element 
(March 2, 1867, nearly three years after the war had 
closed) , entirely contrary to all constitutional provisions, 
and therefore strictly revolutionary in character. This 
law wiped out state governments and even ignored state 

1 The Crittenden Resolution, adopted by large majorities of both 
houses of Congress in July, 1861, gives the theory upon which the war 
was waged. In part it read as follows : "That this war is not waged 
on their part in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest 
or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights 
or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain 
the supremacy of the constitution, and to preserve the union with all 
the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired ; and 
that as soon as these rights are accomplished the war ought to cease." — 
" Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. I, p. 118. 



RECONSTRUCTION 



291 



lines, and divided the South into five military districts. 
The military officers in charge of these districts were 
given absolute power over life, liberty, and property, save 
only that death sentences required presidential sanction. 

No such power had been exercised while war existed. 
It was conferred now long after peace had been restored 
as one of the methods by which the present capitalist 
class captured and held the control of the national govern- 
ment. 

Lest it may be denied that such was the purpose of 
these actions, I will let the man who was directing this 
legislation speak for himself. Whatever else may be 
said of Thad Stevens, friend and foe alike admit his 
brutal frankness. Speaking of the Southern states on 
the floor of the House of Representatives, December 18, 
1865, he said : — 

"They ought never to be recognized as capable of act- 
ing in the union, or being counted as valid states, until 
the constitution shall have been so amended as to make it 
what its f ramers intended ; and so as to secure perma- 
nent ascendency to the party of the union." 

Again on January 3, 1867, he said, speaking for the pas- 
sage of the Reconstruction legislation: — 

"Another reason is, it would assure the ascendency 
of the union party." 

By the "party of the union" and the "union party" 
he meant, and intended to be understood as meaning, 
the "Radical" wing of the Republican party. 

Having eliminated President Johnson by well-nigh 
successful impeachment proceedings, after he had almost 
eliminated himself by his foolish actions, the Stevens 
faction proceeded to work its will upon the South in such 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



a manner as "to secure permanent ascendency to the 
party of the union." 

Cotton was still king in the South. Prices were still 
phenomenally high, although four years of war had 
brought about a great increase of cotton-growing in India. 
In the twelve months after the close of the war the value 
of cotton exports reached $200,000,000. 1 Here was a 
prize worth grabbing, and the hungry " Reconstruction- 
ists" did not overlook it. During the war the Confed- 
erate government had contracted for some cotton, hoping 
to smuggle it through the blockade. All so contracted 
for was declared confiscated for the benefit of the United 
States treasury. How that confiscation was carried out 
is thus described by Professor Walter L. Fleming, editor 
of the "Documentary History of Reconstruction " : — 

"The territory of the former states was invaded by 
swarms of treasury agents, or those who pretended to be, 
searching for confiscable property. No distinction ap- 
pears to have been made by them between property 
legally subject to confiscation and property that was not. 
These agents often united with native thieves and plun- 
dered the country of the little that was left in the way of 
supplies, cotton, tobacco, corn, etc." 2 

We learn of one agent in a small town in Mississippi 
who cleared $80,000 in one month "confiscating cotton." 

The great instrument of class rule, exploitation, ex- 
propriation, and accumulation is always the state. Here 
rests the power of taxation and of conferring special 
privileges. This was the next instrument grasped and 
used by the Reconstructionists in plundering the South. 

1 "Cambridge Modern History," Vol. VII, p. 697. 

2 " Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. I, p. 4. 



RECONSTRUCTION 



293 



Four means were effective in this capture of the power of 
the states: military force, negro suffrage, the Freed- 
men's Bureau, and widespread secret conspiratory or- 
ganizations, like the Loyal League. 

The national troops in the South were the pliant tools 
of the politicians. They intimidated voters, protected 
ballot-box stuffers, or assisted in the stuffing, and when 
these methods failed to obtain a majority suitable to the 
political camp followers, regularly elected officials were 
thrown out that defeated candidates might take their 
place. 1 An extensive state militia, composed of black 
and white " Radical" Republicans, was later added to the 
national troops. Ninety-six thousand such "soldiers" 
were supported by the Reconstruction government of 
South Carolina at one time. Their only duty was to 
draw money and supplies from the state treasury and 
see that the elections went for the proper Republican 
candidates. 2 

The trump card of the Reconstructionists was negro 
suffrage. This was advocated as a benevolent measure 
for the protection of the negro, and was accompanied by 
acts disfranchising nearly the whole white population in 
the South. Had freedom and the vote been achieved by 
the negro, they would have been powerful defensive and 
offensive weapons. But they were thrust into his hands 
as tools with which to do the work of his industrial 
and political exploiters. Like the hoe with which he 
"chopped cotton," they were but instruments with 
which to bring profit to his masters. 

1 " Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. II, pp. 148-156, 
tells how this was done in New Orleans. 

2 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 79. 



294 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Lincoln had favored an educational test, and also, 
apparently, some proof of individual initiative, as a condi- 
tion of suffrage. 1 It should be unnecessary to say that 
I do not raise the question of the "Tightness" or "wrong- 
ness" of universal negro suffrage, but am only discussing 
the forces which led to its being conferred at this time 
and the results which flowed from it. Several Northern 
states, controlled by the Republican party, refused the 
negro the ballot by referendum vote during the very 
years when that party was philanthropically thrusting 
that same ballot into the hands of the negro in the South. 2 
A possible explanation of this action may be found in the 
greater average intelligence and individual initiative of 
the Northern negro. 

The immediate excuse for forcing suffrage upon the 
negro without any request for it being preferred by him, 
and indeed for much of the hypocritical "protective" 
legislation, was found in the "black codes" and "va- 
grancy laws" enacted by some of the Southern states im- 
mediately after the war. 3 These laws sought to introduce 
a sort of modified serfdom for the negro. They were 
much like those enacted by capitalist nations to compel 
the natives of tropical colonies to work. 4 In some cases, 
with a shrewd cunning, they were copied almost verba- 
tim from the "vagrancy laws" of Northern states, with 

1 Letter to Gov. Hahn, Nicolay and Hay, "Complete Works," Vol. II, 

p. 496. 

2 Hilary H. Herbert, " Reconstruction at Washington," in "Noted Men 
of the South," p. 13. 

3 J. G. Blaine, "Twenty Years of Congress," Vol. II, pp. 93-104; 
Lalor's "Encyclopedia of Political and Social Science," article on " Recon- 
struction." 

4 Paul S. Reinsch, " Colonial Administration," Chap. IX. 



RECONSTRUCTION 



295 



the exception that instead of leaving the competitive 
struggle to decide to whom the law should apply, they 
described the persons aimed at by the color of their skin. 
The same laws, with slight change, have been reenacted 
in most Southern states in recent years, along with meas- 
ures disfranchising the negro, and no protest has been 
raised from Republican sources. 

There was no question of the pitiable predicament of 
the negro at the close of the war. Cut off from his former 
master and unable to adjust himself to the new social or- 
ganization in whose coming he had played no part, the 
football of all contending factions, with a death rate far 
higher than in chattel slavery days, one is not surprised 
to learn that many of them longed for the "good old 
days." 1 

1 Albert Phelps, "New Orleans and Reconstruction," in Atlantic 
Monthly, Vol. LXXXVII, p. 1 25 : " Under the institution of slavery he had 
developed from a state of lowest savagery to a condition of partial civiliza- 
tion ; but this development had been due to wholly abnormal conditions, 
and had not been at all analogous to the slow process and weeding-out 
struggle through which the white races had toiled upwards for thousands 
of years. . . . The peculiar institution of slavery, however, protected 
him, not only from this competition, but also, by artificial means, from 
those great forces of Nature which inevitably weed out the weaker 
organisms, and which operate most unrestrainedly upon the ignorant 
savage. For the first time, perhaps, in the history of the world, human 
beings had been bred and regulated like valuable stock, with as much 
care as is placed upon the best horses and cattle." Montgomery Ad- 
vertiser, Aug. 13, 1863 ; quoted in " Documentary History of Reconstruc- 
tion," Vol. I, p. 89 : "Nine hundred of [the negroes] assembled (near 
Mobile) to consider their condition, their rights and their duties under 
the new state of existence upon which they have been so suddenly 
launched. . . . After long talk and careful deliberation, this meeting 
resolved, by a vote of 700 to 200, that they had made a practical 
trial for three months of their freedom which the war had bequeathed 
to them ; that its realities were far from being so flattering as their 



296 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Those who had forced the ballot into his hands now 
set about driving and deceiving him into doing their 
work. One of the means to this end was the Freedmen's 
Bureau, one of those strange combinations of cant and 
crookedness, philanthropy and profits, piety and plunder, 
that are peculiar to capitalism. 

The form of the law creating the Bureau was cast in 
terms of philanthropy. It was to be the most gigantic 
piece of paternalism ever attempted by any government. 
The most intimate details of the lives of the negroes 
were confided to its care. Their marriages, their busi- 
ness transactions, their food, homes, clothing, wages, 
education, and religion were to be supervised, regulated, 
and adjusted by the agents of this benevolent insti- 
tution. 1 The War Department issued supplies for the 
destitute, and vast sums from various sources were placed 
at the disposal of the Bureau. That suffering was re- 
lieved, schools established, many impositions prevented, 
and much general charitable work done by the Freed- 
men's Bureau is indisputable. 2 But that such work 
was its main object after the first year of its existence 
none but the most prejudiced of its friends could claim. 3 

imagination had painted it . . . and finally that their 'last state was 
worse than their first,' and it was their deliberate conclusion that their 
true happiness and well-being required them to return to the homes 
which they had abandoned in the moment of excitement, and go to work 
again under their old masters." Garner, " Reconstruction in Missis- 
sippi," p. 124: "The black population of Mississippi decreased 
56,146 between i860 and 1866. . . . The Southerners said they 
had died from disease and starvation resulting from their sudden 
emancipation, and the explanation was not wholly without foundation." 

1 "Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. I, pp. 319-340. 

2 W. E. B. DuBois, "The Soul of Black Folk," chapter on "Freed- 
men's Bureau" ; also in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXXVII, p. 360. 

3 Rhodes, "History of United States," Vol. VI, p. 185. 



RECONSTRUCTION 



297 



With its hundreds of agents possessed of the power to 
grant or withhold nearly all the necessities, comforts, 
and luxuries of life from the enfranchised blacks, it con- 
stituted a perfect machine for the control of the negro 
vote. 1 It was so used to the extreme limit of that power. 
The agents elected themselves and their friends to office 
everywhere. 2 Bureau funds were used directly for 
political corruption, and its whole far-reaching influence 
was always openly used as a political asset. 3 

Interwoven with the Freedmen's Bureau and the 
military organization in the work of controlling the 
negro vote were several secret oath-bound conspiratory 
organizations, the chief of which, and the pattern for the 
rest, was the Union League. The Bureau agents were 
the organizers of this society. "By the end of 1867 
nearly the entire black population was brought under 
its influence." 4 Solemn oaths bound the members to 
vote for the League nominees. All the methods of 
secret terrorism, boycotts, and personal violence were 
used to enforce this political obedience. 5 The organizers 
of these societies did not overlook any opportunities 
for petty graft in the form of dues and fees that could be 
dragged from the deluded and terrorized blacks. 6 

All sorts of despicable swindles were perpetrated upon 

1 Hilary Herbert, "Why the Solid South," p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 18. 

3 Minority Rept. Howard Investigation; House Rept, No. 121, 
41st Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 47-53. 

4 " Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. II, p. 3. 

5 Ibid. 

6 Ibid., p. 20. The Freedmen's Bureau commissioners in Florida 
organized a Lincoln Brotherhood, charging "an initiation fee of from one 
to two dollars and fifty cents per month." John Wallace, "Carpet- 
Bag Rule in Florida," pp. 28-29. 



298 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



these "wards of the nation" by their grasping guardians. 
The story that Congress had voted "forty acres and 
a mule" to every former slave was almost universally 
circulated and believed among the negroes. Red-white- 
and-blue pegs were peddled to the confiding blacks, with 
the tale that any land marked with them would belong 
to the owner of the pegs. 1 

The army of men that were thus marshaling the 
negroes for the Republican party, organizing, voting, 
and robbing them, was made up in part of Northern 
adventurers ("carpet-baggers") and so-called Southern 
"Union men" ("scalawags"). These took the spoils 
of office, and made the state government simply means 
for private profit. 

It is probably impossible to exaggerate the corruption 
of these Reconstruction governments. They voted 
enormous issues of bonds, and coolly pocketed the money 
for which they were sold. They doubled, quadrupled, 
and multiplied state debts twenty fold, and this without 
creating a single public improvement. 2 They raised 
the taxes until, in Mississippi, 20 per cent of the acreage 
was sold to satisfy the tax collector. 3 Legislatures 
voted fabulous sums for "supplies" for their members. 4 

All this was inflicted upon a land devastated by war 
and in most desperate need of every resource avail- 
able for the establishment of the most elementary social 
needs. All this was part of the "original accumulation" 

1 " Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. I, pp. 359-360. 

2 Daniel H. Chamberlain, " Reconstruction in South Carolina," in 
Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXXVII, p. 477. 

3 Woodrow Wilson, "History of American People," Vol. V, p. 47. 
4 " Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. II, pp. 59-72. 



RECONSTRUCTION 299 

of the political and profit-making power of the present 
ruling class. 

The character of these Reconstruction governments 
is sometimes offered as a proof of the evils of negro suf- 
frage. It should never be forgotten that it was not the 
black, but the white, man who maintained these govern- 
ments, by military force, conspiracy, and chicanery, 
and that the white alone profited from them. 1 At the 
first signs of independence by the negro, even though 
that independence found no further expression than a 
demand for a share of the plunder, 2 interest in negro suf- 
frage by the Reconstructionists waned. When some of 
the negroes joined with a remnant of decent whites, 
the Northern philanthropists withdrew the military 
support, and the Reconstruction governments collapsed. 3 

A parenthetic word is here necessary before discussing 
the further reasons for the fall of Reconstruction govern- 
ments and policy. It would be as foolish to follow those 
Southern historians who would have it that the evils 
of the Reconstruction governments were due to the 
immorality and vindictiveness of the carpet-baggers 
and politicians, as to follow those Northern writers who 
make of the whole thing a benevolent action on behalf 
of the negro, alloyed only by a patriotic ambition to 
"save the Union." 

Even the Congressional leaders were but instruments 
working in the interest of newly enthroned capitalism, 
— that royal heir whose birth we celebrated in the War 
of 181 2. The way to that throne led through four 

1 "Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. II, p. 33. 

2 Wallace, "Carpet-Bag Rule in Florida," p. 105. 

3 "Documentary History of Reconstruction," Vol. II, p. 35. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



bloody years of Civil War, followed by three times as 
many more years of political anarchy, bribery, oppres- 
sion, conspiracy, hypocrisy, violent disregard of law and 
order, and the creation of a murderous race and sectional 
hatred, the terrible depths of which we have not yet 
sounded. 

These words imply individual moral judgments and 
responsibility. This is necessary until a new industrial 
basis of society shall develop a vocabulary based on 
social responsibility. 

Yet it would be false to assume that a majority, or even 
the leaders of the dominant faction in Congress, were 
consciously moved by a desire to place the great capital- 
ists in power. Some were fanatically sincere abolition- 
ists, earnestly and intensely believing that they were 
helping the negro. Even Thad Stevens seems to have 
been to some extent controlled by this motive. 

They were "good" men when judged by individual 
standards of morality and responsibility. Looked at 
from a little broader social point of view, the vocabulary 
of denunciation and abhorrence seems inadequate when 
applied to their actions. Viewed with a still wider 
social and historical vision, they are seen to be instru- 
ments in the process by which the capitalist class at- 
tained to a power without which it could not have 
worked out its destiny and prepared the way to the 
better things that are still possible. 

One of the obstacles to the carrying out of the Recon- 
struction program was the Supreme Court. This body was 
still dominated by a combination of small capitalist and 
chattel slave interests and ideas. Because that power 
generally safeguarded the interests of the exploiting 



RECONSTRUCTION 



301 



class, this Court had been permitted to retain its usurped 
power to declare laws unconstitutional. It now became 
evident that this power would be used to nullify some of 
the Reconstruction legislation. Another " palace revo- 
lution" was necessary. 

Accordingly on the 27th of March, 1868, Congress 
passed a law threatening the members of the Supreme 
Court with fines and imprisonment if they interfered 
with the carrying out of such legislation, and notifying 
that body that this legislation was not subject to review 
as to its constitutionality. 

The Supreme Court at once recognized the right, or 
rather the power (which in class government is the same 
thing) , of Congress to so curb the judicial department of 
the government, and dismissed the cases which were 
already before it. 1 

The Court and Congress by this action completely 
punctured the bubble upon which the autocratic power 
of the Supreme Court rests, and demonstrated that the 
Supreme Court only declares laws unconstitutional when 
it is to the interest of the ruling class to permit it to 
exercise that power. 

Several years later, when powerful class interests had 
no further use for such legislation, the Court was per- 
mitted to receive another case involving these laws, and 
to then declare them unconstitutional (October, 187 5). 2 

By the time the negro became dissatisfied with the 
role of a blind and dumb political tool, the great capital- 
Rhodes, "History of the United States," Vol. VI, p. 74; Cong. 
Globe, Jan. 13, 1868, p. 476. See especially the speech of Frederick T. 
Frelinghuysen, Jan. 28, 1868. 

2 U. S. vs. Reese, 92 U. S. Reports, p. 214. 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



ists of the North had gained such complete domination 
over the national government and political machines 
that they could afford to relax their violent rule in the 
South. The troops were withdrawn, and military rule 
was ended by Hayes in 1876, and the whole Reconstruc- 
tion society crumbled and fell. The negroes were dis- 
franchised, at first by force and fraud, and then later by 
laws. Meanwhile their erstwhile Republican defenders, 
who had once thrust that ballot into their hands at the 
point of the bayonet, now passed by on the other side 
without protest. 

These interests could well afford to ignore the South. 
They had found a richer field of plunder. A saturnalia 
of corruption now centered around the national govern- 
ment, and had extended to state and municipal admin- 
istrations. It was not simply that the powers of taxa- 
tion were used to convert the national treasury into a 
mammoth widow's cruse, from which the privileged few 
stole almost countless sums. The national government 
was also used to bestow empires of land and piled up 
millions of dollars upon railroad corporations, who in 
turn were to use this national plunder only as a base 
for still further and greater frauds. In the stock and 
bond market it was the time of the Tweed Ring in New 
York and the Credit Mobilier in the West. To merely 
enumerate the more flagrant frauds of this time, when the 
fortunes of to-day were being founded, would fill the 
pages of a larger volume than this one. 

Out of this corruption the great capitalist class drew 
the funds that enabled it to control the machinery of 
politics. The horrors of Reconstruction had engendered 
a sectional hatred so fierce as to render impossible any 



RECONSTRUCTION 



political combination across the line that divided the 
North from the South. The Republican party had made 
itself the object of a peculiar sort of patriotism, based 
on its claim to have saved the Union, and this made 
possible its dominance for a generation. 1 

Great and complex political machines had been built 
up throughout the country, resting on political patron- 
age and illicit favors of government, which controlled 
nominations and directed elections. In the South a 
race war had been fostered that embittered and strength- 
ened sectional antagonism, and helped to maintain the 
divisions among the voters so valuable to a ruling class. 

By such methods and measures did the present ruling 
class obtain its industrial and political power. 

1 Ostrogorsky, "Democracy and the Origin of Political Parties," 
Vol. II, pp. 126-127. 



CHAPTER XXIV 



THE TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 

Events since the days of Reconstruction are still too 
close to afford that perspective view necessary to isolate 
the historically important from the sensationally strik- 
ing. Only the length and vision of years, or the fore- 
sight of the prophet, can determine with certainty the 
events and the forces that form institutions and shape 
society, and thereby constitute the stuff of which his- 
tory is made. 

The one great fact of these years has been the stu- 
pendous development of concentrated capitalism. This 
has been based upon a continuous rapid transformation 
of the tools with which society does its work. Invention 
has crowded fast upon invention. The whole wonder- 
working cabinet of the electrician has been unlocked and 
its contents put at the service of man. Almost every 
department of industry has been revolutionized over and 
over again in this period, and every revolution brought 
greater power of production. 

The network of railroads begun at the close of the war 
has been extended until it has covered the nation as with 
a web, whose radiating threads of steel mark the indus- 
trial centers. To the building of these railroads an 
empire of land, larger than the territory of any nation 
of western Europe (about five times as large as the state 

304 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 305 

of Ohio) has been given. To this imperial graft the 
same paternal government added cash subsidies and 
guarantees of bonds amounting to hundreds of millions 
more. To this has still been added piled up millions of 
bounties and bonuses by state and local governments 
until it is well within the truth to say that such funds, 
so given, have been sufficient to build and equip every 
railroad in the United States as they were built and 
equipped in the early eighties. 

These roads were then permitted by the government 
to become instruments of private profit. 

In those years steel displaced iron, owing to the intro- 
duction first of the Bessemer and then of the open 
hearth process. The development of the Lake Superior 
ore deposits, the cheapening of lake transportation, and 
the shifting of the market for iron westward, with the 
growth of the railway systems and the building of great 
cities, caused the center of the steel trade to move from 
Pittsburg to the point where these sources of demand 
and supply found an equilibrium. This point now seems 
to be located near the southern end of Lake Michigan. 

With the United States as a leading factor in the in- 
ternational steel trade an international steel trust was 
inevitable. 

More and more the population drifted cityward. As 
industry after industry — weaving, shoemaking, manu- 
facturing of clothing, preparation of meat, and a host of 
others — left the rural household for the city factory, 
the workers perforce followed their work. At first 
the rural population was merely outdistanced in rate of 
growth. But the census of 1910 shows a positive decline 
in rural population in the predominant agricultural states, 
x 



306 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



This growth of the cities was accelerated by the mighty 
flood of immigration. There was a succession of waves 
in this coming of the peoples of other countries. Irish, 
Germans, and Scandinavians formed the first battalions. 
These, like those that had been coming since colonial 
days, pressed forward to the frontier and were swiftly 
amalgamated. Later came a series of waves from south- 
ern and eastern Europe, Italians, the mixture of nation- 
alities from within Austrian boundaries, and a great army 
of exiles from the Russian ghettoes. 

When these reached America, the frontier was gone. 
Free land was no more. Agriculture, instead of swiftly 
expanding, was already declining. This new army of 
colonists was caught up in the internal currents of pop- 
ulation already flowing strongly toward the cities, and 
settled in ever growing colonies that resisted amalgama- 
tion and endured a degree of exploitation and misery 
hitherto unknown in America. 

Not even the Homestead Law, creating its millions of 
small freeholders, could prevent the forces of concen- 
tration producing their result. The census of 1910 
again shows that even this wholesale apportionment of 
land by the government, the division into small farms 
of great sections of railroad holdings, and the breaking 
up of the Southern plantation, were unable, for more than 
a generation, to check the effect of the law of concen- 
tration of ownership in this, the slowest of all industries 
to respond to the pressure of social forces. 

From the beginning the farmer of the Western prairies 
formed a less self-sufficient industrial unit than the small 
pioneer farmer of the earlier and more eastern stage. 
The Western farmer was a grower of staple crops for 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 307 

the market. Railroads, elevators, and marketing facili- 
ties were essential instruments in the production of 
these commodities. These instruments became the 
means of his exploitation, and against them he turned 
his wrath. In three great uprisings, — the " Granger 
Movement" of the late seventies, the Populist uprising 
of some ten years later, then the Bryan Democracy of 
1896, — the farmers, aided by an incoherent mass of dis- 
contented members of the crumbling small-capitalist 
class, sought to capture the powers of government. In 
each of these uprisings the old cry of the debtor class 
for cheap money that had been heard ever since colonial 
days was brought to the fore; but these later movements 
in their demands for governmental action in fields of 
industry emphasized the importance of the industrial 
changes that had taken place. 

Each of these efforts went down to defeat. The class 
of great capitalists was in control of nation, state, and 
municipalities, and of the executive, legislative, and espe- 
cially the judicial departments of each and all. At no 
other time in this country, and never in any other land, 
has this class enjoyed such complete domination. Its 
ideas and ideals made and modeled social institutions. 
It created a society after its own image, and looked upon 
its work in bombastic spread-eagleism and pronounced 
it good. As the final triumph of capitalist evolution, 
its institutions deserve analysis. 

It was the time when the American dollarocracy of beef, 
pills, soap, oil, or railroads became the worldwide syn- 
onym for the parvenu and the upstart. In literature 
it produced the cheap, wood-pulp, sensational daily, 
the New York Ledger type of magazine, the dime 



308 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



novel, and the works of Mary J. Holmes, Laura Jean 
Libby, and "The Duchess." In industry its dominant 
figures were J. Gould and Jim Fiske. In politics it 
evolved the " machine," the ward heeler, and the political 
boss, with Tweed as the finished sample. Its religious 
life found expression in sensational revivals upon the 
one hand, and a cheap negative atheism upon the other. 
In public architecture it erected the hideous piles that 
now disfigure our cities, and for private homes it added 
the type of the " Queen Anne front " and the " Mary Ann 
back." Its triumphs in sculpture were the bronze and 
cast-iron dogs with which the millionaire decorated his 
front lawn. It moved forward to the music of Moody 
and Sankey hymns and ragtime bands, while its one con- 
tribution to the pictorial art of the world was the chromo. 

There was a steady progress in industrial concentra- 
tion, but there are certain distinct stages worthy of 
notice. The ten years following the Civil War might 
be properly designated as the period of the domination 
of the " large industry," the next fifteen years as that 
of the "great industry," in contrast with the monopolistic 
stage prevailing since that date. These phrases are 
indefinite, and do not fully express the qualitative as 
well as the quantitative differences that distinguish these 
periods. 

Until the panic of 1873, the dominant industrial unit 
(not the most numerous, but the one of which the ruling 
portion of industry was composed) had a capitalization 
of between fifty and five hundred thousand dollars. The 
number of firms was increasing quite rapidly in all but 
a few lines. There was still room at the top, and a host 
struggling upward. 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 309 



When in 1873 the "mad gallop" of industry ended 
once more in the ditch of an industrial crisis, with Jay 
Cooke and Sons, the great bankers and governmental 
agents of the war period, at the bottom of the mess, it 
was the last general panic of capitalism. Henceforth 
there were to be those who were to stand outside indus- 
trial crises. 

In 1873 the average capitalization of the firms failing 
was forty-four thousand dollars. Twenty years later, 
with the average industrial unit fully three times as 
large, there came another crisis, and the average capital- 
ization of the firms failing was less than twenty thousand 
dollars. In the five years from 1893 to 1897 only five 
firms, with a capitalization of five hundred thousand 
dollars or over, failed. 

The gods of our industrial world were now safe upon 
a monopolistic Olympus above the storms that had once 
overthrown them. A few years later, in 1908 and 1909, 
they were able to largely direct the tempest, and even 
to hurl its lightnings at those who had presumed to dis- 
pute their divinity. 

The panic of 1873 marked the climax and collapse 
of expanding and competitive industry. This is shown 
most graphically by the table on the following page. 

Forty years of the most rapid growth in production, 
the doubling of the population, and the conquest of the 
international markets were accompanied with a decrease 
in the number of firms in the leading industries. 

Even these figures give but little idea of the tremendous 
concentration of power that has taken place within the 
capitalist class itself. The periodical press is now filled 
with descriptions of "inner circles," "spheres of interest," 



3IO SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



and all the multitude of methods by which a little group 
completely dominate the financial and industrial life 
of a nation. 

NUMBER OF ESTABLISHMENTS 





1850 


i860 


1870 


1880 


1890 


I900 


Agricultural Implements . 


1333 


2116 


2070 


1943 


910 


715 


V (.11 1 tt i lVLL^J • • • 


116 


■7T 1 






1 ID 


J 11 


Cotton Goods .... 


1094 


IO9I 


956 


1005 


905 


I05S 




94 


112 


20I 


211 


294 


355 


Hosiery and Knit Goods . 


85 


197 


248 


359 


796 


921 


Iron and Steel .... 


468 


542 


726 


699 


699 


668 




6686 


5188 


7569 


2628 


1787 


1306 


Paper and Wood Pulp . . 


443 


555 


677 


742 


649 


763 




953 


675 


694 


2188 


IOO6 


1116 


Silk and Silk Goods . . 


67 


139 


86 


382 


472 


483 


Slaughter'd & M't P'kg. . 


185 


259 


768 


872 


I367 


"34 


Woolen Goods .... 


1559 


1260 


2891 


1990 


I3II 


1035 




43i 


1269 


1972 


2191 


1248 


1509 


Totals 


I3,5i4 


13,616 


19,349 


18405 


II,6l7 


ii,i93 



The period between the panics of 1873 an d 1894 was 
still fiercely competitive, but it was the beginning of the 
competition of cannibalistic absorption, not for the 
conquest of new fields. It was the war to determine 
who should survive and dominate within the national 
market. When all industries, including railroads, were 
in a tooth and claw fight for survival, some rather start- 
ling weapons were discovered and brought into play. 
These were the palmy days of rebates, secret rates, and 
the various devices that gave rise to a whole system of 
repressive legislation after they had accomplished their 
purpose and were of no value to the ruling powers. 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 311 

After the panic of 1894, the industrial battle entered 
into another phase. The field was now filled; the num- 
ber of really effective competitors in each industry was 
so small that the imminence of possible destruction and 
deglutition became evident to all. So the profit seekers 
decided to hunt in packs instead of as individuals, and 
the trust appeared as a dominant figure of industry. 
The creation and filling to repletion of the national 
market brought about a situation similar to that exist- 
ing in the South before the war. There was a demand 
for expansion. The Spanish American War, the in- 
vasion of China, the Panama Canal, the ransacking of 
the dark corners of the earth for trade opportunities, 
followed. 

The century-long march across the continent was 
ended. The frontier of unoccupied land was no more. 
With the birth of the factory system at the close of the 
Napoleonic wars, American society turned its face in- 
ward. Now having conquered the continent and arisen 
to another stage of development, the curve of the as- 
cending spiral swung once more outside of national 
boundaries and became involved in the sweep of inter- 
national forces. That this movement was that of a 
spiral rather than of a pendulum is shown by the fact 
that this second entry into international politics was with 
a wholly different attitude than that which had been left 
behind when American capitalism broke loose from 
Europe. 

In these earlier days American society was but a play- 
thing of forces outside its own boundaries, owing its 
existence as a nation as much to conflicts and jealousies 
between other nations as to its own power of assertion. 



312 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



Now it returned to become one of the most power- 
ful factors in the struggle for worldwide commercial 
domination. 

The Rise of Labor 

When the multitude of workers were released from 
military service, and returned to industrial life, they were 
confronted with a transformation that had been wrought 
while they fought. The individual employer had largely 
given way to the corporation. Great masses of workers 
were selling their labor to a common master. The rail- 
roads especially were creating and demanding a body 
of fluid labor power drawn hither and thither in search 
of employment. 

The Civil War had abolished the system by which 
the master hunted down the slave. Those who had 
fought that war returned home to find a society, one of 
whose new and most striking features was a body of 
workers hunting for masters. 

These new conditions affecting men so many of whom 
were familiar with the effectiveness of military discipline 
could not but produce an organized labor movement. 
Many of the powerful " International" unions of to-day 
were born in the decade following the surrender at 
Appomattox. 

These first unions were soon drawn together in the 
National Labor Union, that held its first convention 
in September, 1866. 1 

After a couple of years of growth this party was 
weakened by being drawn into a " Labor Reform Party," 

^'Documentary History of American Industrial Society," Vol. I, 
p. 227. 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 313 



which was seeking to represent the interests of the small 
capitalist and the working class, without any very clear 
understanding of the interests of either. 

The "hard times" of 1873, therefore, found the work- 
ing class almost completely unorganized. The first 
move of the employers, affected by the crisis, was to 
reduce wages. The unorganized workers could offer 
no effective resistance, and the return for labor was 
forced lower and lower until in 1876, when the Centennial 
of American Independence was celebrated, the American 
workers were suffering beneath an industrial tyranny 
worse than any imposed by English kings, and, in many 
ways, worse than that endured by the negro slaves in the 
South before the Civil War. 

So helpless were the workers that when, in 1877, the 
Pennsylvania railroad announced a still further reduc- 
tion of 10 per cent in the already less than living wage, 
there was no organized body to resist. While there 
were grumblings and threatenings of revolt, the day set 
for the reduction came and went with no action on the 
part of the workers. Another day came and went, and 
the crew of a train running into Martinsburg, West 
Virginia, left their posts as they drew into the division 
end and walked out, declaring it to be no worse to starve 
idle than to starve working. Then one of those strange 
waves that seizes those on the verge of desperation swept 
across the country. The spirit of revolt leaped along 
the telegraph wires from city to city, until from the 
Mississippi to the Atlantic the wheels of industry were 
almost paralyzed. Then Labor learned one more reason 
why great capitalists wish to control a powerful, unified 
national government. For the first time in American 



SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



history workers in uniform shot down workers in the 
grimy garments of toil that profits might grow and wage 
slaves be kept in submission. 

The slaves had not yet learned the uselessness of 
violent resistance to organized power, and for a time 
they fought back. In Pittsburg they momentarily 
overcame some companies of militiamen, but the battle 
quickly ended. The workers were shot and bayoneted 
and clubbed back to defeat and submission. But Labor 
is born of the earth, and when crushed to earth draws 
new strength and new weapons from its very defeat. 

In 1869 a little band of workers, having discovered 
that open organization only invited the vengeance of the 
new form of outlawry, — the blacklist, — met at Phil- 
adelphia, and under the cover of secrecy, formed a so- 
ciety whose very name was never written, but was indi- 
cated by five stars whenever it was necessary to refer to it 
with pen or type. This society grew slowly, but steadily, 
until the strike of 1877, but it was not large enough at 
that time to play any important part in that struggle. 
The strike and its momentary defeat so suddenly and 
dramatically impressed the need of organization upon 
the workers that vast numbers flocked to this new organi- 
zation. This sudden influx of members rendered the 
extreme secrecy of earlier years both impossible and 
unnecessary, and the mystical five stars were discarded 
and replaced by the words " Knights of Labor." 

At this time the spirit of the American labor move- 
ment was as thoroughly filled with the great revolution- 
ary tendency of the times as that of any country in the 
world. The pioneers in its organization were largely Ger- 
man refugees of 1848 and the succeeding years. Many 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 315 

had been connected with the International Working- 
men's Association (the "Old International" founded by 
Marx). The whole ritual, literature, and spirit of the 
"Knights of Labor" was permeated with vague social- 
ism. This spirit now found expression in the eight- 
hour crusade that swept the laboring masses of the coun- 
try with a sort of religious enthusiasm. This movement, 
like the "Knights of Labor," had started shortly after 
the close of the Civil War, and had remained dormant 
until about 1880. Then it gathered momentum until 
by 1885 it had become nation-wide and taken on more 
and more the character of a religious crusade. 

In some way the impression became general that the 
first of May, 1886, had been fixed upon as the day of the 
millennial dawn of the eight-hour heaven on earth. No 
organization of any importance fixed this date. The 
"Knights of Labor," whose members had grown so 
rapidly that its general officers were refusing to charter 
new locals, lest the organization become unmanageable, 
especially disavowed this date as being set for any 
action. 

Yet the movement grew, and reached such proportions 
as to threaten a serious reduction in the share that 
Capital was taking of Labor's product. Something 
like a panic seized upon the ruling class. Men elected 
to office by laborers were deliberately counted out in 
Chicago. This caused some of the leaders of labor to 
lose their heads and talk vaguely of violence. Then 
some one, whether fool, fanatic, or police spy, we shall 
probably never know, threw a bomb into a detachment 
of police who were breaking up a meeting on Haymarket 
Square in Chicago — a meeting that the mayor of that 



31 6 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

city but an hour before had declared to be wholly 
peaceable. 

Then all the fiends of vengeance, controlled by the 
powers of plutocracy, broke loose. Few would deny 
to-day that evidence was manufactured by wholesale 
by the Chicago police and newspapers, or that even class 
law was stretched to the breaking point that the leaders 
of labor might be brought to the scaffold. They were 
brought to the scaffold, and the exploiters of labor re- 
joiced that resistance to exploitation was crushed. There 
was more reason for rejoicing than ever before. The 
appeal to violence and anarchistic individualism set 
back for many years the intelligent defense of Labors 
interest. The American labor movement, hitherto 
inspired and largely dominated, even if in a somewhat 
indefinite manner, by the spirit of intelligent class revolt, 
now fell largely under the control of its most reactionary 
and short-sighted element. 

Organized labor in the United States became separated 
from all political action or social philosophy save that 
of expediency and opportunism, and the road was thrown 
wide for corruption and confusion. There were many 
causes for this, but it is doubtful if this period of 
isolation and partial sterility in the broader fields of 
action would have come, had it not been for the oppor- 
tunity for judicial murder and popular prejudice created 
by those who appealed to anarchy and condoned 
violence. 

But no power on earth can permanently crush Labor. 
Gradually its revolt has grown conscious. Gradually 
it has evolved its philosophy in common with those of 
other nations. Slowly at first, but with ever increasing 



TRIUMPH AND DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM 317 

speed, it has been translating its economic interests into 
political and industrial action. 

Like the commercial and plantation interests that 
brought about separation from Great Britain and for- 
mulated the Constitution, like the chattel slave owners 
that controlled the government and molded it for two 
generations, like the capitalist class that rode into power 
amid the blood and fraud and terror of civil war and 
Reconstruction, the working class has become in its 
turn the embodiment of the spirit of social progress, 
and is righting for victory with a certainty of success 
before it. 

Every class that has controlled the powers of govern- 
ment has used these powers to create a society after its 
own image. The workers will do the same. While 
history may appear to have nothing to do with the future, 
it is impossible to draw the lines of social forces through 
all the perspective of the past and then stop them short 
at the present. 

The same forces that have operated in the past will 
continue in the future. New and more effective machines 
will be invented and hitched to more powerful and yet 
undiscovered sources of energy. Concentration and 
ownership of these instruments and forces will proceed 
while they remain private property. Labor will grow 
farther and farther away from the possibility of owner- 
ship of those things to which the lives of laborers are 
attached. 

Out of these facts the workers of the world in pursuit 
of their class interests have evolved a line of action that 
leads to organization for the attainment of political 
power. Labor, like the merchant class, chattel slave 



318 SOCIAL FORCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY 

owners, and capitalists, is righting for political power. It 
will use that political power to obtain control of the 
instruments essential to the lives of the workers. That 
ownership cannot be individual. Industry cannot be 
disintegrated back to the stage of individual ownership. 
It must be still further integrated into common owner- 
ship by a democratically controlled government of the 
workers. 

Labor is certain of victory in this last struggle. All 
other classes have gained power only as they have per- 
suaded, bribed, or terrorized workers into fighting or 
voting for them. Now that the working class is fight- 
ing its own battles, there is no possibility of defeat. 



INDEX 



Abbot, Willis J., 38. 

Abolitionism, 218-219. 

Adams, Henry, 104. 

Adams, Herbert B., 65. 

Adams, John, 61, 218. 

Adams, Samuel, 73-74, 92. 

Agricultural machinery, 248, 278. 

Agriculture, 49-51 ; at formation of 
the Union, 102 ; mother of industry, 
121 ; on frontier, 136-137 ; on eve of 
Civil War, 248; during Civil War, 
278-280. 

Alien and Sedition Laws, 120. 

Alvord, H. E., 103. 

Ames, Fisher, 88. 

Anarchists, Chicago, 315-316. 

Annapolis convention, 94. 

Arnold, S. G., 91. 

Astor, John Jacob, 159. 

Austrian Succession, War of, 57. 

Babcock, K. C, 146, 157. 
Back-country, struggle with coast, 46, 

53, 56; opposition to constitution, 

98. 

Bacon's Rebellion, 47-49. 
Bagnall, W. R., 37- 
Baker, Karnes, 234. 
Baltimore, 102. 

Bank of United States, first, 161 ; sec- 
ond, 162-163, 205-208; and Daniel 
Webster, 205. 

Bankers and Civil War, 280. 

Bankruptcy, 167. 

Bassett, J. S., 112, 124, 230. 

Benton, Thomas H., 160, 165, 172, 203, 
204, 206. 

Berkeley, Governor, 47. 

Bishop, Leander J., 88, 96, 122, 159, 
195- 

Blaine, James G., 294. 

Bogart, Ernst L., 195, 223, 246, 247. 



Bolles, Albert S., 35, 37, 238, 239, 245, 

246, 247, 276, 277, 280, 282. 
Boston, 76, 102, 179. 
Boston Tea Party, 63-64. 
Brisbane, Albert, 214, 255. 
Brown, John, 260. 

Brown, William G., 222, 230, 237, 239, 
268. 

Bruce, Phillip A., 46. 
Bryant, W. C, 256. 
Burr, Aaron, 125. 
Byllesby, L., 188. 

Cabet, Etienne, 214. 

Cairns, W. B., 169. 

Calhoun, John C, 157, 162, 202, 226. 

California, discovery of gold in, 253. 

Cambridge Modern History, 10. 

Campbell, 18. 

Capitalist class, rise of, 254-255. 
Capitalist society, characteristics of, 

307-308. 
Carey, Matthew, 148, 154, 156. 
Carlton, Frank T., 177. 
Cattle in New England colonies, 35. 
Cavaliers, 45-46. 
Chadwick, Frank E., 226. 
Chamberlain, Daniel H., 298. 
Chamberlain, Mellen, 70. 
Channing, E., 214. 
Channing, William E., 169. 
Charity, beginnings of, 166. 
Charleston, 102. 

Chattel slavery, atavism in America, 
268-269 I concentration of ownership 
in, 224; inferior in productive power 
to wage system, 228-230; industrial 
effects of, 232; movement to South, 
233-234 ; demand for more territory, 
236; security for social peace, 225. 

Cheney, Edward P., 4, 5. 

Chevalier, Michael, 174, 178. 



319 



320 



INDEX 



Chicago, 1 91 ; grain shipments from, 
249. 

Child labor in early cotton factories, 
172-173. 

Chittenden, H. M., 205. 

Church and Merchants, 3. 

Cities at formation of Union, 101 ; 
growth of population, 250; struggle 
for market, 199-200. 

Civil War, corruption during, 280-282 ; 
cotton speculation during, 281-282 ; 
effect on industry, 275-277; financ- 
ing of, 282 ; patents during, 277. 

Clay, Henry, 153, 202, 212. 

Cobb, Elkanah, 149. 

Cobb, Thomas R., 226. 

Columbus, Christopher, 1, 10, 11. 

Coman, Katherine, 44, 246. 

Commerce, in 1810, 130; in 1846, 246; 
progress of, 120. 

Commercial interests and constitu- 
tion, 88. 

Committees of Correspondence, 73, 83. 
Commons, John R., 256. 
Commonwealth, English, 70. 
Communism, primitive in colonies, 
3i- 

Concentration in chattel slave owner- 
ship, 224. 

Concentration in industry, 309-310. 

Confederation, Articles of, 99. 

Constitution, adoption of, 97-98. 

Constitution and Bill of Rights, 98. 

Constitutional convention a conspira- 
tory body, 92-93 ; secrecy of, 95. 

Continental Congress, 83, 84, 94-95. 

Continental currency, 86. 

Corn, importance of, 137. 

Cornwallis, surrender of, 80. 

Corruption during Reconstruction, 
298. 

Cotton, and blockade, 272-273; and 
negro slavery, 192, 219-220; in 
Reconstruction, 292; trade during 
Civil War, 281-282. 

Cotton gin, 123. 

Cotton, Joseph P., 126. 

Cotton mills, 122, 149. 

Courts created by Federalists, 125- 
126. 

Coxe, Tenche, 155. 
Crime in 1820, 168. 



Crisis, of 1819, 160-168; of 1837, i99J 
of 1873, 309; of 1894, 309; of 1908, 
309. 

Crittenden Resolution, 290. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 36, 47. 
Crusades, 6. 
Cumberland Road, 158. 
Cunningham, William, 8. 
Curtis, Francis, 257. 

Dana, Charles A., 255. 

Davis, John P., 239, 240. 

Debow, J. D., 225, 227, 231, 252, 253, 

266-267, 285. 
Debt, imprisonment for, 86-87, 176. 
Debt, national, 111-115. 
Debtor class and constitution, 89. 
Debts, assumption of state, 11 2-1 15. 
Demands of early labor movement, 

183-186. 
Depew, Chauncey M., 201. 
Dewey, D. R., 118. 
Dexter, Edwin G., 177, 187. 
Dickens, Charles, 210. 
Diffenderfer, Frank R., 17. 
Dodge, 104. 

Domestic Animals, 102-104. 
Donaldson, Thomas, 204, 208. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 191, 217. 
Doyle, J. A., 31, 141. 
Draft riots, 283. 
Drake, Charles D., 137. 
Dred Scott decision, 258-259. 
DuBois, W. E. D., 296. 
Dutch West India Co., 50. 
D wight, Timothy, 251. 

East India Company, 63. 

Education, demands of labor movement 

concerning, 1 81-183. 
Education, public, 177. 
Ellis, George E., 72. 
Emancipation of negro, 274. 
Embargo, 145-146. 
Emerick, C. F., 161. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 214, 256. 
Erie canal, 158, 195-197, 251. 
Evans, Oliver, 122, 171. 
Excise tax, 117. 

Express, beginning of, 242-244. 
Factory system, beginning of, 105, 147 ; 



INDEX 



321 



efforts to encourage, 148 ; evolution 
of, 170; in the West, 152. 
Factory workers, misery of early, 172- 
174. 

Farmers', Mechanics' and Working- 
men's Advocate, 182. 
Farrand, M., 96. 
Faux, W., 103. 
Fish vs. Western Meat, 204. 
Fisher, Ellwood, 264. 
Fisher, S. G., 73. 

Fisheries, 25 ; as cause of Revolution, 
62-63 ; after Revolution, 86. 

Fiske, John, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 50, 52, 53, 
83. 

Fitch, John, 106. 
Fite, Emerson D., 252, 276, 279. 
Fitzhugh, George, 234. 
Fleming, Walter E., 269, 292. 
Flick, A. C., 72. 

Flint, Timothy, 159, 161, 193, 194, 196. 

Ford, Ebenezer, 181, 184. 

Ford, H. J., 94- 

Forests, influence of, 25. 

Fourier, Francois C. M., 214. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 53, 57, 116. 

Freedman's Bureau, 296. 

Free Enquirer, 182. 

Frelinghuysen, Frederick T., 301. 

Fremont, John C., 258. 

French and Indian War, 57, 60, 66. 

French Revolution, 151. 

Frontier, influence in American history, 
134-142; and Jackson, 209; and 
laborers, 178; meaning of, 139. 

Fur-trade, 26, 49, 205. 

Gannett, H., 142. 
Garrison, William Lloyd, 217. 
Geiser, Karl F., 17. 
German immigrants, 15-16. 
Gibbins, IT. de, 160. 
Goode, John Paul, 21. 
Goodloe, Daniel R., 232. 
Gordon, Charles, 194. 
Gouge, William H., 160, 163, 164, 168, 
206. 

Granger movement, 307. 

Grant, William, 200, 252. 

Great Lakes, commerce on, 257 ; re- 
gion during Civil War, 279; settle- 
ment of, 249. 

Y 



Greeley, Horace, 255. 
Greenback movement, 287. 
Greene, E. B., 44. 
Gregg, William, 230. 

Hall, Benjamin F., 257. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 61, 96, 98, 109- 
119. 

Hammond, M. B., 223, 233. 
Hancock, John, 61, 62, 63. 
Hanseatic League, 8. 
Harrison, William H., 212-213. 
Hart, Albert Bushnell, 219. 
Hay market riot, 315. 
Heath, David, 171. 
Helmholt, 5. 

Helper, Hinton Rowan, 228-230. 
Herbert, Hilary H., 294, 297. 
Hildrith, Richard, 129. 
Hill, Rowland, 244. 
Holmes, Oliver W., 256. 
Homestead Law, 306. 
Hosmer, J. K., 73, 92. 
Howe, Elias, 245, 276. 
Howe, William, 76-79. 
Hulbert, A. B., 200. 

Immigration, 250, 306. 

Imprisonment for debt, 176. 

Indians, 27-29, 53~54- 

Ingle, Edward, 231, 235. 

International capitalism, 31 1-3 12. 

Inventions, 2-3, 195, 245. 

Iron, colonial, 37; industry, 106, 305; 
inventions in, 195 ; changes in, 245- 
246; in Civil War, 277; in Confed- 
eracy, 270-271; rails, 245; ship- 
building, 246. 

Irving, Washington, 90. 

Jacksonian Democracy, 209-211. 
James I of England, 43. 
Jay, John, 124. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 113, 124, 133, 145, 
153- 

Johnson, Andrew, 289. 
Johnson, Emory R., 238. 
Johnson, James F. W., 234. 

Kennedy, J. H., 277. 
Kentucky, settlement of, 152. 
Kettel, Thomas P., 231, 233. 



322 



INDEX 



Kindergartens, demanded by Labor, 

183. 

Knights of Labor, 314-315. 
Kuhns, Oscar, 16. 

Labor, final triumph certain, 317-318. 
Labor movement, results of early, 184- 
187. 

Labor unions, 312-316. 
Lalor, J. J., 294. 

Land grants to Confederation, 84. 
Land speculation, 58. 
Legislatures, colonial, 68. 
Leisler, Jacob, 53, 59. 
Levasseur, E., 276. 
Lewis and Clark exploration, 159. 
Libby, Orin G., 98. 
Library, Congressional, 153. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 217, 261, 286, 289, 
294. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 2, 42. 
Logan, John A., 138. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 256. 
Louisburg, capture of, 57. 
Louisiana, purchase of, 128-129. 
Lowell, Francis C, 149. 
Lowell, W. R., 256. 
Luther, Seth, 174. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., 16. 

Macgregor, John, 193, 194, 198. 

Madison family, 46. 

Madison, James, 94, 95, 98. 

Maize, 136-137. 

Man, The, 180. 

Mann, Horace, 187. 

Manufactures, 194-195 ; and Civil War, 
275-277; Hamilton's Report on, 
1 1 5-1 16; and Revolution, 64; at 
close of Revolution, 87 ; in the South, 
230, 269. 

Marshall family, 46. 

Marshall, John, 126, 164. 

Martineau, Harriet, 210. 

Marx, Karl, 189, 255, 284. 

Mason and Dixon's Line, 55. 

Mason family, 46. 

Massachusetts, 90; education in, 177; 

manufacturing in, 37. 
McCarthy, Charles, 200. 
McCormick, Cyrus, 245. 
McCullough vs. Maryland, 164. 



McMaster, John Bach, 40, 86, 87, 90 
92, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 146, 148, 
152, 158, 162, 163, 165, 174, 182, 204, 
205, 207, 209. 

Meat-packing, 193. 

Mechanics' Free Press, 180, 182. 

Mercantile domination in government, 
154- 

Mercantile System of economics, 60, 

64. 

Merchant class, 2, 4, 108. 
Michaux, F. A., 137. 
Minot, G. R., 91. 

Mississippi, State, condition after War, 

288. 

Mississippi River, 124, 247, 252. 
Mob methods in Revolution, 74. 
Monroe family, 46. 
Moonshining, 11 7-1 18. 
More, Sir Thomas, 13-14. 
Morse, J. D., 94. 
Moseley, Edward A., 201. 
Motley, J. L., 256. 
Myers, Gustavus, 187, 205, 206. 

Nail industry, 106. 

Napoleon I, 108, 144. 

National Labor Union, 312. 

Navigation laws, 61. 

Negro, condition after emancipation, 
295 ; submissiveness, 274 ; suffrage, 
293-294, 299 ; swindling during 
Reconstruction, 298. 

New England, 33-40, 129, 146, 159. 

New Orleans, 159. 

New York city, 101 ; influence of Erie 
Canal, 200; trade unions in, 179. 

Niles, Henry, 163, 167. 

Niles' Weekly Register, 122, 132, 157, 
160, 166, 174; founded, 149. 

Ogg, Frederick A., 58. 
Ohio River, influence in settlement, 158. 
Ordinance of 1787, 84-85, 128. 
Oriental trade, 5. 

Ostrogorski, M., 125, 132, 168, 211, 
254. 

Owen, Robert, 189. 
Owen, Robert Dale, 281. 

Pacific railway, 239. 
Palatinate Germans, 15-17, 51. 



INDEX 



323 



Paper money, 54, 66. 

Parkinson, 137. 

Parkinson's Tour, 103. 

Patents, 149; for scythe, 37; during 

Civil War, 277. 
Pauperism in 1819, 167. 
Peck, Charles H., 204, 212, 219. 
Peck, J. N., 193, 194- 
Penn, William, 59. 

Pennsylvania, early education system 
of, 182 ; manufactures in, 148. 

Philadelphia, 101 • early union move- 
ment in, 180. 

Phillips, U. B., 145. 

Phillips, Wendell, 217. 

Piedmont Plateau, influence on settle- 
ment, 45. 

Pike, James S., 273. 

Pine Tree Shillings, 39. 

Pioneers, various stages, 135-136. 

Piracy, in New York, 51-52. 

Pittsburg, 58, 195. 

Plantation interest, and constitution, 

88-89; War of 181 2, 145. 
Plantation system, origin of, 43-44; 

changes in, 223. 
Platforms of early Labor Party, 184- 

186. 

Political machines, 2 10-2 11. 

Pollard, Edward A., 217. • 

Poor whites, 227-230. 

Population in colonial times, 56; 
movement toward cities, 305. 

Populists, 307. 

Portuguese explorations, 9. 

Postal system, of Confederacy, 271- 
272; establishment of, 57 ; at forma- 
tion of Union, 101 ; service of, 241- 
244. 

Property qualifications for voting, 
175. 

Public land, and crisis of 1837, 208; 
Foote resolution on, 203 ; grants of, 
to railroads, 239; in formation of 
Union, 84. 

Rabbeno, Ugo, 116. 

Railroads, beginning of, 197-199; in 
Confederacy, 271 ; commerce on, 
247; grants to, 239, 304-305; Pa- 
cific, 239; progress prior to Civil 
War, 238. 



Ranching stage, 138 ; in Illinois, 194. 
Randolph family, 46. 
Randolph, John, 153. 
Rebels, hereditary pioneer, 140. 
Reconstruction, 285-303. 
Reinsch, Paul S., 294. 
Religious changes in New England, 
168-169. 

Renaissance, relation to discovery of 

America, 2. 
Republican Party, 255-258, 261. 
Revolution, American, boycott in, 74; 

mob violence in, 74; smuggling as 

cause of, 61-63. 
Revolution of 1848 and emigration, 

250. 

Rhode Island, 91, 99. 

Rhodes, James Ford, 258, 270, 274, 

275, 279, 281, 296, 301. 
Rice industry, 104. 
Ringwalt, I. L., 32, 158, 197, 198. 
Ripley, George, 214. 
Risson, Paul, 3. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 136-137. 
Ropes, John C, 265. 
Rotation in office, 210. 
Rum-molasses-slave trade, 38-39. 

Salisbury, J. H., 137. 

Salt tariff opposed by West, 204. 

Santa Fe Trail, 205. 

Sawmill, first, 38. 

Schaper, W. A., 222. 

Schouler, J., 65, 94, 117, 206, 262. 

Schulte, Aloys, 5. 

Schurz, Carl, 256. 

Schwab, John C, 263, 271. 

Scotch-Irish, 18. 

Secession, cause of, 237 ; and Civil 
War, 216-217. 

Semple, Ellen, 142, 193, 196. 

Sentinel, The Daily, 180. 

Shaler, N. S., 137- 

Sharpless, Isaac, 54. 

Shays' Rebellion, 90-92. 

Simons, May Wood, 67. 

Simpson, Stephen, 188. 

Skidmore, Thomas, 188. 

Slater, Samuel, 105. 

Slaves, chattel, 55-56, 104; and cotton 
gin, 123; and Civil War, 218; con- 
ditions of, 223 ; foreign trade in, 234- 



3 2 4 



INDEX 



235 >* price of, 233 ; and tobacco, 42 ; 

and wage-workers, 96. 
Slavery, negro, in Illinois, 192. 
Slavery of colonial whites, 18-19. 
Smith, J. Allen, 96. 
Smith, William H., 104, 256. 
Smugglers and Revolution, 73. 
Smuggling as cause of the Revolution, 

61-63. 

Socialists and Civil War, 283-284. 

Soil, effect on settlement, 23 ; on cot- 
ton raising, 222. 

South, industrial inferiority, 265. 

Spargo, John, 284. 

Stamp Act, 68. 

Stanwood, Edwin, 122, 157. 

State governments and Reconstruction, 
289-290. 

Steamboat, first, 106; in Western 
waters, 159; on Great Lakes, 197; 
on ocean, 246. 

Steam in cotton mills, 171. 

Stedman, Charles, 62. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, 290, 291, 300. 

Stickney, 137. 

Stimpson, A. L., 243. 

Strikes, 313, 314, 315; as conspiracies, 
131- 

Sumner, William G., 65. 

Supreme Court and Dred Scott deci- 
sion, 258-259; and Reconstruction, 
300-302. 

Swank, James M., 245. 

Swank, M. D., 195. 

Sylvis, James, C, 283. 

Sylvis, William H., 283. 

Tammany, 125, 210. 
Tanner, H. S., 199. 

Tariff, 109-110, 115-117, 149; and 
chattel slavery, 235-236; labor 
argument for, 256. 

Tea-tax and Revolution, 63-64. 

Telegraph, 230. 

Texas, as granary of Confederacy, 270, 
271. 

Textile industries, 122. 
Thatcher, Samuel, 169. 
Thoreau, Henry D., 214. 
Thwaites, R. G., 56. 
Tobacco, 41-43, 104. 
Tocqueville, Alexander De, 210. 



Tories in Revolution, 71-72. 
Transcendentalism, 214. 
Transportation, in colonies, 31; at 

formation of Union, 100. 
Tribune, New York, 255-256. 
Trumbull, Jonathan, 61. 
Turner, Frederick J., 142, 152, 153, 164, 

165, 168, 202, 205. 
Tyler, John, 213. 
Tyler, M. C, 72. 

Unemployed in 1819, 166. 
Union, plans for colonial, 59. 
Unions, first, 179-180. 
Utopian communism, 214. 
Utrecht, treaty of, 56. 

Van Buren, Martin, 211. 

Virginia, colonial, 41-49; decline of 
industry in, 153; dynasty, fall of, 
153 ; House of Burgesses, 43. 

Von Hoist, Herman E., 94, 129, 225, 
226, 235. 

Wages, 130-131 ; in 1819, 173. 
Wageworkers and constitution, 89. 
Wampum, 35. 

War, effect on manufactures, 147. 
War of 1812, 143-147. 
Warden, D. B., 148, 161. 
Washington family, 46. 
Washington, George, 58, 76, 100; as 

land speculator, 65. 
Watson, Thomas, 65, 94, 153. 
Webster, Daniel, 157, 202, 203 ; and 

Bank, 205-206; and tariff , 168. 
Webster, William C, 3, 88, 96, 120. 
Weeden, W. B., 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40. 
Wells, David A., 275, 277. 
Wells, David H., 61. 
West opposes Bank, 164. 
Western immigration, 152. 
Weston, George M., 227. 
Westphalia, Peace of, 15. 
Weydemeyer, Joseph, 256. 
Whig Party, 212. 
Whiskey Rebellion, 118. 
White, Horace, 165, 206. 
Whitney, Eli, 123. 
Whittier, J. G., 256. 
Williamson, Captain, 103. 
Wilson, Henry, 237. 



INDEX 



325 



Wilson, Woodrow, 48, 86, 129, 204, 

237, 298. 
Winden, Julius, 200. 
Winsor, Justin, 65, 70, 72, 96. 
Woolen, industry, 105; effect of Civil 

War on, 276. 



Women, labor of, in early cotton mills, 
172-173- 

Working-men's Advocate, The, 178, 
183. 

Workingmen's ticket, 181. 
Wright, Carroll D., 171. 



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